Stand to Fall and Rise Again
by Doppler Effect
Summary: Due to the Truth's plead, Ed lands in the alternate universe where something called magic is used. With only alchemy to back him, he has to find another way to get back home, while keeping his actions unsuspecting in a school partially run by the Minist
1. Prologue

a/n: Yay, another one of these. Okay, I'm coming back to write this down after the story's already finished, but I kind of changed the plot line so that's why I'm changing this author's note. The original plan had been to do something else, but now that I'm not, it's no longer angsty, and will be more like my other one. So, yeah.

Something to say before I forget to say it later. The Truth is… changeable. Character emotionally changeable. Ever noticed that? He can be anywhere from a murderous bastard to a powerful being who reluctantly has to follow the rules. So, I'm going to take things a step further with him. No, I'm not saying anymore than that.

I don't hate Ed. I don't like Umbridge. If you don't believe me, read my other crossover for these stories.

* * *

><p>The Truth stared at him. He sighed. There really was no other option. He had to. He didn't want to. But he had to. If he didn't… boom. Boom to both worlds, magical and alchemical.<p>

"I… Look, Fullmetal, I'm sorry. Really, I am. I know you probably don't believe me when I say that, but I'm the Truth. So, when I say I'm sorry, I'm serious. But I can't take your alchemy. And I have to do something that you're really going to hate me for, and I'll probably hate myself for, but I have to." He grimaced, and looked away from Ed. "Sorry."

Ed frowned. The Truth wasn't sure if he believed him or not, but he looked willing to listen. "You can't take my alchemy?"

"Technically, I can. I just don't think you want me to."

"It's my decision. I'll deal with the consequences."

"No, you don't understand. The reason behind all this has nothing to do with you. You are just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the only one I know who will be here in the near future and can survive this, most likely. Because of what'll happen next to you, I don't think you should be parted with your alchemy," the Truth said.

Ed's frown deepened. "The hell are you talking about?"

"Your world has to follow laws strictly, or," he gestured at the Gate, "consequences. However, for every Yang there is a Yin. While your world has to follow the laws, while still getting astonishing results, another world gets some leeway. Equivalency isn't something they have to follow."

"Wha-"

"Hear me out. Please. What they do begins to build up, and eventually takes a toll. They've been ignoring equivalency for a long time, and a lot of excess energy has built up. That energy has to do something. Release itself on something. If it doesn't, that world and its opposite will be destroyed soon. Slowly, painfully, truly," the Truth said grimly. "I don't want that. And I know that you don't either."

"What are you offering me?" Ed frowned. "To die by energy release?"

"No, no. That's not what I'm offering. The energy doesn't just destroy, although if not put to use that's what it's going to do. In this case, it can carry you somewhere."

"To the metaphorical Yin."

"Yes. Are you willing?"

Ed remained silent for a minute. Then, "You really think I believe you? Why wouldn't you be double crossing me? I don't know what your boundaries are. I don't know what you can get away with, just to screw with me. You've taken just about everything we cared about."

"Alchemist…"

"No, shut up. I don't think you're telling the truth. Unless you've got some sort of proof up your sleeve, I'm just going to switch my alchemy for Al."

The Truth closed his eyes. This was what he had been worried would happen. They'd never been on good footing, but he'd at least expected cooperation. Now he had to start playing cards. "I'll send him home."

"What?"

"If you do this, I'll send Al home. You'll see him walk back. His regular body, too, not a soul bound to armor. I'll give your superior officer his eyesight. Your teacher will get her organs. I'll send energy through to Hohenheim to give him more time. All you have to do is do this for me. And for yourself. You'll be saving trillions of lives, whether or not you believe me."

Ed frowned at the Truth again. "Why are you doing this? Why all the payments for one price, and why warn me in the first place?"

"Because I know you. I know that you don't want everyone to die. I don't want everyone to die. That's what we have in common here. You're the only one I think will be passing through, so since I don't want to take any chances I'm asking you. True, your brother just passed through, but I think we can both agree that he won't last long in a different world. I really need for you to go through. That's why I'm willing to bribe you," the Truth explained. "Also, I feel I owe you something."

Ed narrowed his eyes. "Really?" Sarcasm dripped from his tone. "Not like you took my brother's body, my arm, and my leg without even telling us what you were about to do. No, not at all."

"You set yourself up for that. I-"

"Oh shut up," Ed snarled.

"No, look, I sent you there so that you wouldn't try again. Your brother went a little farther than I had thought he would. I didn't mean for all of that. And you didn't try again until now, did you? And this time you had an idea of what you were doing."

"So why do you feel like you owe me something?" Ed asked.

"Because… Well. That's my secret, I guess. Kind of an awkward topic. Will you please go through?" The Truth pleaded.

"Will I ever be able to get back?" Ed gritted his teeth.

"Yes. There is a way to get you back. You just have to find it. And to give you a hint, it's only alchemical. Magic won't work. The Gate won't allow it."

"Magic?"

"Yeah. It's what the people on the other side use. Only some of them though, not everyone. It's not like alchemy. They use wands to cast spells."

The Truth saw Ed weigh his options. He guessed it was a decision already made subconsciously.

"Damn it," Ed hissed. "Fine. Fine, I'll take your offer. Just give my friends back what they own."

The Truth smiled gratefully. "Thank you. Thank you, Fullmetal."

The Gate behind him opened. Both looked at it as Al walked out in his real body.

"Al!" Ed shouted, and began to move toward him. Al bolted toward his brother. He stumbled, and Ed caught him. "Al, you're going to be fine, okay?"

The Truth glanced away from the two, at the third Gate that had begun to raise. The Gate looked different from the others. It was blank, instead of with complex alchemical designs covering it. They didn't have much time until the released energy burst. Since Ed had agreed, the energy had begun to surface.

"Al, go through the Gate, and tell the others that I'll get back home. Okay? Tell the others that. I promise I'll come back." Ed pushed Al toward his Gate.

"Brother? What are you…? Where are you going?" Al asked, panic beginning to rise.

Ed glanced at the Truth, out of words.

"He's going to cross worlds. If someone doesn't, everyone in both worlds will die. Here, and there. If someone on either side can find a way to get him back, he'll go back home. Knowing all of you, he'll return in no time," the Truth said as gently as he could.

Al glanced between the two of them. "W-what?"

"It'll be fine. See you later." Ed gave Al a small smile, and again nudged Al. That last nudge sent him through the Gate.

Al threw his arm out, trying to grab Ed. "Brother!"

Ed gave him a sad wave. "I'll be fine. We don't both need to go through it." The Gate doors began to close. Ed threw a glare over his shoulder at the Truth, and the Truth blinked, remembering the rest of what he had said. Roy Mustang's eyesight. Izumi Curtis's organs. Energy for Hohenheim. Both flowed through the Gate after Al in what resembled shreds of paper.

The doors closed.

"So this is it, huh?" Ed said, tone emotionless. He started walking toward the blank Gate that buzzed with energy, waiting to be released. "I'll pass back through to them. I'll find that array."

"I know you will. I'll see you again." The Truth inclined his head toward Ed. Ed responded the gesture, and then walked through the Gate.

* * *

><p>There was no reason for any of them to be having panic attacks.<p>

The Father had just been killed. The threat that had plagued the country of Amestris was vanquished. Al had 'died', but since Ed had just gone after him, he was definitely going to be coming back with his normal body. Ed had also gotten his arm back. Everything was definitely going to be alright, as long as the injured got to the hospital soon.

So of course, everyone was having a panic attack.

"Are they coming back?" a soldier shouted out.

"They'll be back anytime now," Mustang responded, not recognizing the voice. "Get the injured to the hospital. Spread the word: It's over. We've won."

" 'We'?" A confused soldier asked.

Mustang gave an exasperated sigh. "Humans. People not hell-bent on killing everyone. Need I continue?"

Crackling sounds came from nearby. Mustang turned in its direction. He heard Mei call Al's name, and run past toward where the array had just gone off. Mustang narrowed his eyes, and turned to Hawkeye. "Is Fullmetal with him?"

There was a slight pause, before he heard Hawkeye give him a negative. Mustang turned back to where Al had appeared, and saw Mei crouched by the naked form of someone who looked almost exactly like Ed in general appearance. They were definitely brothers.

Wait.

He _saw_?

Mustang whipped around, and caught sight of Izumi Curtis hurrying towards them, shrugging off people as she went. She came to a sudden halt, surprise filling her features. The two made eye contact.

"Colonel…?" Hawkeye asked.

"I think… Fullmetal just did something that was probably the stupidest yet smartest thing possible." Mustang turned, and shouted to Al, "The hell did your brother do?"

"I'm not really sure, I think he… The Truth said something about a different universe. For some reason, if he didn't go, everyone in both worlds would die," Al said, looking around.

"Did the Truth tell both of you that?" Mei frowned. Al nodded.

"You two believed him?" Hawkeye asked.

"I didn't know what was going on. Brother was pushing me toward the Gate… I think the Truth bribed him somehow, though. I think he might have been serious, because there was a third Gate there that looked different from the others," Al said. He glanced up at Mustang, and then at Izumi, who were both nodding.

"Yeah. I think the Truth bribed him, and came through on it." Izumi absently laid a hand over her stomach.

"The idiot. Is he going to be coming back anytime soon?" Mustang asked.

"Brother said to tell all of you that he'd get back home. I don't think he knows how to right now."

* * *

><p>an: so, yeah. Think that's all OOC the Truth's going to get? Heh. From what is going to happen, the Truth's secret defines a lot of this chapter. While some of this may not seem equivalent, it actually is.


	2. Trio's POV,1

a/n: No extremely fast updates in this story. I haven't written this one out. I have a bad feeling about how it's going to go, but I'll try. If this blows up, I'll do my best to piece it back together.

I'll give a brief run-down on what is up with the chapter titles. *someone's name* POV represents what part of the story. 1, 2, etc., represents how far into that section it is. Kind of like chapter one of a part of a book.

Trio's perspective. This part won't be too long, and relatively short. Like, this chapter and another one. It'll also be confusing, because the trio won't really know what's going on.

Ed's perspective. Is a recap of what happened again, but instead from Ed's perspective. It actually gives a lot more of the story line than you'd think.

Amestrian's perspective. Obviously, this part won't come for a while

Don't own either series, because you'll notice that I'm not a millionaire. Hell, the only job I've worked has been for my mom. Not an author, here. But holy shit, I didn't realize this would attract so many readers so quickly. After three hours, and my inbox was fuller than it usually is after a day. I feel a bit like an author now.

* * *

><p>"New kid in Gryffindor? Who is it?" Hermione asked.<p>

"I've never met him before, and they didn't really explain it. We don't even know his name," Harry said.

"I don't see him..." Hermione leaned down the table, and looked both ways. She frowned and shrugged. "Maybe he already ate and left?"

"Fast eater..." Ron muttered. "Wonder if we'll have any of his classes."

"Well, you said that they didn't give an explanation, right? Maybe he won't even be-" Hermione stopped, and looked up at someone standing behind Harry and Ron.

McGonagall motioned to the three to come with her, and began to walk out of the hall. The hall was already beginning to empty already, so they weren't that conspicious. When they made it out, she pulled them aside from the main stream of kids, and spoke quietly. "You two obviously have seen the new child to the Gryffindors. As far as we know, his name is Edward Elric. He hasn't told us where he's from, and we don't even know if he believes in magic. That's all we know, apart from a few details. How did you hear about him?"

"Someone spotted him in the hallways talking to some professors. They could tell that he wasn't an adult, so they assumed he was a student here," Ron explained.

"We don't know if he wants to be a student here or not. He collapsed, and is in the infirmary right now. I wanted to know why students had already heard about him. However, if he wants to become a student here, after he wakes up, we want you three to keep an eye on him. The name 'Elric' is not showing up in wizard databases," McGonagall said.

"The Ministry checked already?" Ron asked.

"Professor Umbridge was curious about him, and sent a message through."

"Wait, you said he collapsed? Do you know why?" Hermione asked.

McGonagall slightly pursed her lips. "It may have been a combination of fatigue and wounds. He's being treated now, and should wake up soon."

"He's going to be alright?"

"He's going to be fine. I hope we can find out what happened to him," McGonagall said. "You three should be getting to class."

Hesitantly, they left.

* * *

><p>"It's nice to finally meet you. I'm Hermione, and this is Harry and Ron," Hermione said, motioning to the two behind her. "We're all in the same House as you're now in."<p>

Ed cocked his head at her, and raised an eyebrow. " 'Finally meet me'?"

"Yeah. McGonagall told us about you, and some people saw you come in," Ron said. "They released you from the hospital ward already?"

His eyes narrowed slightly. " 'Already'?"

"Yeah, um, McGonagall said you were hurt pretty badly," Hermione said, shifting her weight. "Are you feeling alright?"

"I was barely scratched. I've got no idea why they stuck me in the damn ward anyway," Ed said irritably. "What House am I in again?"

"Gryffindor," Ron said a little defensively.

Ed made a noncommittal sound.

"Ed? Are you-" Hermione began.

"Potter and his two mudblood friends. Such a lowly sight," Malfoy said as he started toward them. Ron whirled on him first, and began to snarl something. He didn't get a chance to, before there was an odd sound, and the ground in front of Malfoy rose slightly. The rise hit his legs, and he tripped on his face. The ground linked onto his legs, making it impossible for him to move them. He let out a girlish shriek.

"What's the term mean?" Ed asked, seemingly bored. He had one hand pressed against the wall.

"Someone without wizard or witch heritage. It's not a pretty term." Harry barely finished his growled explanation before the pink mass strode toward them.

"What happened here?" she demanded.

"He tripped me!" Malfoy gestured at Ed, who raised the eyebrow he had lowered earlier.

"Excuse me? I didn't even _move_. You tripped over your own feet or something. Maybe the ground doesn't like you. I don't know, I'm a 'wetgroundblood' or something," Ed snapped back. "Sheesh."

Umbridge shot a glare at him. "Professors here will not tolerate disrespect, Mr. Elric."

"One of the first times someone's called me that. And with all due respect, I wasn't disrespecting you, I was disrespecting him." Ed nodded toward Malfoy.

Umbridge decided to ignore Ed, and instead set to work trying to disentangle Malfoy's legs from the ground. "Mr. Crabbe, could you get Professor Flitwick for me?" she ground out after several minutes. With a nod, he hurried off.

"Well, as boring as this is, we need to get to class." Ed began to walk away.

"No, I think you'll stay," Umbridge said without turning.

Irritation flashed across Ed's face. "I don't think we'll be able to help out in any way."

"Perhaps not, but maybe you can explain better what happened to Mr. Malfoy."

"He walked toward us, he tripped, and the ground met his legs."

"More description, please."

Ed sighed. "Is this really necessary?"

"It may help get Mr. Malfoy out of his predicament. You would like to help us out, wouldn't you?"

Ed looked pissed by then.

"That doesn't look like a normal spell," Hermione put in. "I've never seen lines like that appear on a spell of that sort." She gestured to marks on the stone.

"Thank you for your input, Miss Granger, but I was asking Mr. Elric," Umbridge replied briskly.

"She knows more than I do." Ed shrugged. "If you want to know something, you should ask her over me. I'll end up getting us all stuck on the roof or something if you take my advice. Just saying." Umbridge shot him a glare. "Can we to class now?"

"Possibly, if you show more maturity next time," Umbridge replied easily.

Ed's mode didn't improve. "Pretty please with a cherry on top," he just about snarled.

Umbridge gave a small sigh that was probably supposed to improve her image. "Alright. You four hurry off to class."

Ed whipped around, braid nearly whacking Ron, and was around the corner before the other three had turned around completely, muttering irritably under his breath as he went.

* * *

><p>Harry shot a glare at someone staring at them. "Do people have nothing better to do? Honestly."<p>

"Harry, calm down. You'll probably just make them more curious if you keep glaring at them like that," Hermione said quietly. "They're not worth it."

"Seems like everyone's interested, though. Should just keep their noses in their own bloody business," Ron muttered. Hermione hissed a reprimand at him. He shrugged it off and continued. "If they don't believe it, they should just keep their mouths shut about it."

"I agree with both of you. Now can we talk about something else?" Hermione hissed.

"What's to talk about? Conspiracy theories? Who's dead now because the Ministry isn't acting?" Harry growled.

"Harry!"

"What? It's the truth! There's just no one believing it."

"Some people believe you."

"Really?" Harry said doubtfully. "Name ten people off the top of your head."

"Well, Ron and I do. That makes two. Neville does," Hermione ticked off people on her fingers.

"The twins do, and so does Ginny," Ron supplied. "That's six."

"Four more," Harry said, crossing his arms.

The two glanced at each other.

"Um... I think Ed believes you," Hermione said. "And most of the professors believe you. That passes ten, Harry."

"Not including Order members," Harry added.

"Come on, mate! We came up with ten people! More than ten! And not all the teachers who believe you are Order members either." Ron threw his hands up in irritation. "Look, we're just trying to help. Not everyone hates you, you know."

Harry slipped into a sullen silence.

After a minute of it, and Ron broke the silence. "You know, I hadn't really thought of Ed at first. But now that you mention it, he hasn't really spoken either way. In fact, he's barely spoken at all except to make snide comments. He could almost pass as a Slytherin. Wonder why he's here."

"Professor McGonagall knew that he would be in Gryffindor, so they probably just put him there without using the Sorting Hat. She did say that she wanted us to keep an eye on him. I think they were worried about him working for Voldemort, or being under his control." Ron flinched when Hermione said the name. "Ron, get a grip."

"That sounds about right." Harry nodded.

"Which part?" Ron asked. "The keeping an eye on him part, or the You-Know-Who follower part?"

"I doubt he's one of the followers. If he were, he'd have the tattoo, remember?" Hermione reminded. She glanced between the two of them. "Oh come on. You two aren't honestly thinking he could be in league with Voldemort."

"They could have just waited to put the tattoo on in case they knew he was coming here and the Order members would check. That could be an explanation," Ron suggested.

"He's right," Harry agreed.

"Does he look like he's one of Voldemort's followers to you two?" She shot a glance down the table to where Ed was. "He doesn't look anything like the followers we've seen!"

"Yeah, maybe, but…" Ron scowled and turned away from her.

"But what! Your theory's impossible! Give it up already!" Hermione threw up her hands in frustration.

"I'm not saying anything." Harry leaned back and crossed his arms. "You two can argue on your own." Hermione and Ron both shot him and irritated look, which he returned with a small smile.

"Look, you two, we need to get to class. Come on, almost everyone else is already gone." Hermione stood, grabbing her books as she went. The two followed behind her.

* * *

><p>"Have either of you two seen Ed recently?" Hermione frowned.<p>

"No. Why… Wait, he's not here? What do you mean? However silent and eery his presence is, he's never misses a meal. He probably eats more than all the people in Gryffindor combined," Ron said.

"Yeah. He's been acting strange recently," Harry added. "I wonder if that had naything to do with it."

"I'm shocked either of you noticed. For the past three months he's been acting oddly. He was extremely arrogant, and then... almost complete solitude. Just about became a hermit in a school." Hermione frowned. "Wonder what's happening. Maybe we should ask him, see what's wrong. Who knows, he might talk."

"Yeah, and maybe Umbridge'll decide I'm right," Harry muttered. Hermione shot him a glare.

* * *

><p>"Has anyone seen Ed?" Hermione called. The Gryffindors all looked up at her. She was standing on a chair in the Gryffindor commons room, and she and Ron had managed to get all the Gryffindors in it. Two days of asking around quietly, and searching themselves, and Ed had not been seen.<p>

People answered her with shakes of their heads. Hermione sighed. Gryffindors were now looking around, worried. One of their own was missing. "When was the last time anyone saw him?"

After a few minutes of deciphering the voices, and the last time he had been seen was three days ago.

"Does anyone know why he's missing?"

No one spoke.

"Thank you all. We'll let Professor McGonagall know, in case she doesn't already."

The kids slowly filed out of the room, talking worriedly as they did. Hermione got down from the chair, and turned to Harry and Ron. "Come on, we'll go talk to McGonagall. I doubt she doesn't already know, but we need to talk to her anyways. She might know something."

She led the way out of the room, and they hurried into McGonagall's room. She looked up as they entered. She spoke before any of them opened their mouths when they got to her desk. "You came here to report Ed's absence, didn't you?"

"Yes... You knew?" Hermione asked.

"Yes." McGonagall sighed. "Professor Umbridge took him to the Ministry with Aurors. We don't know why right now, and we're trying to get some more information on it. Nothing's turned up. I'm sorry. He's not in connection to You-Know-Who as far as we know, however. We'll try to get him back if we can."

"Is he going to be alright?" Ron asked.

McGonagall looked at them all. "We don't know, Mr. Weasley. We can hope, but we don't know."

* * *

><p>an: Spent a few minutes laughing my head off when I realized that no one told Mustang that the very same serial killer who tried to kill Ed multiple times was now not even remotely dead and also assisting them in overthrowing the government.

Okay, people. I can either do another chapter like this, or I can start Ed's perspective. If I do another chapter, there will be some hinted spoilers that won't make any sense. It's up to you all.

Next chapter will be up soon, but the Internet is going down and coming back up randomnly. I actually didn't expect this chapter to take so long to type.


	3. Ed's POV, 1

a/n: Note to self: Take out the Note to self before you post this. This is an end to the Note to self.

Okay people, beginning to part B is here. By the way, it won't cover the whole first chapter in this one. Way too much to cram in. You'd all be reading this chapter until your eyes were bleeding if you ever wanted to finish it. On that cheerful note, I also don't own FMA or HP. Shocker. Although this chapter was almost my NCIS/FMA chapter 8 before I realized where it was being posted. Hehheh, whoops. You all wouldn't mind reading a NCIS/FMA crossover, would you...

* * *

><p>Ed stumbled slightly, and threw out a hand behind him. It slammed into stone, and he leaned against the wall behind him. Other than him and his sudden loud noise, the hall was empty and silent. Torches flickered, and shadows moved along the walls.<p>

The Truth hadn't been kidding after all. There really was another world.

"Oh dear, a student got here early."

Ed jumped, and looked around. Finally, his gaze came to rest on a smoky substance that looked remarkably like a person.

"I don't believe we've met, in fact. I'm Sir Nick, despite the odd names children have been coming up with recently. What House are you in?" the ghost said, rising slightly from the ground.

One of Ed's eyes twitched. "Um."

"Do you go to this school at all?"

"No. Don't even know where I am. Are you _dead_?"

"Yes. Of course. What did you expect?" The ghost moved off with a irritable roll of his head, and not knowing what else to do, Ed followed him. "You're at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I'm surprised you got this far without anyone noticing you. Yet you said you didn't know where you were? Interesting, interesting…"

"Quite." Ed and Sir Nick turned, and saw someone wearing robes walking toward them with a stern expression. "What are you doing on these grounds?"

"Ah, Professor Snape. I was just bringing him to the headmaster. I'll leave him in your care, then." Nick wandered off through a wall. Ed stared after him for a second, before turning back to Snape, who was watching him.

"Name, year, and House," Snape said. "Or as many as you can answer."

"Edward Elric." Ed knew nothing better to say. He leaned against the wall behind him, and struggled to keep a calm and disinterested expression on. In reality, his arm hurt like hell from suddenly being reattached, having about no muscle in it whatsoever, and then punching the crap out of a being who's core was a Philosopher's Stone. Injuries from the fight were also taking their toll, as well as ones that hadn't yet healed. You didn't get run through with a pike without having some sort of side effect. Alchemy or not, that sort of thing took time to heal.* "If you mean by year my age, that's sixteen."

"I meant school year. You're in sixth year, then. You don't go to this school, I take it? I haven't seen you around here before. Do you go to a different school?"

"Severus? Who is this?" A woman walked up behind Snape. Ed cocked his head to see around Snape, and saw an older woman walking toward them.

"Minerva," Snape replied. "Someone who appeared on the grounds. Sir Nick found him. He says his name is Edward Elric."

"Does Albus know?" McGonagall asked.

"Not yet," Snape began, and was about to continue speaking when someone else said, "He does now." An elderly man joined them. "Edward Elric, you said?"

"Yeah," Ed said irritably. He hoped that everyone had gotten back what the Truth had told him they'd get back. Of course, it was the Truth. Of course he'd come through. Unless his 'secret' had prevented him from doing so. What was the Truth's secret anyway? Why did it make him tell Ed what was happening instead of tossing him into the middle of the situation? No way the Truth had suddenly gotten _decency..._

"The students will be arriving any moment now," McGonagall said. "Should we move this somewhere more private?"

Ed felt a pang of dread. Because of the previously mentioned injuries, he was barely able to move, let alone walk somewhere. As long as it was close by, he'd probably be fine, but otherwise... Besides, he was just plain exhausted all around. The adrenaline from the fight had worn off seconds after Sir Nick had left, and left him with the after shocks.

Dumbledore glanced at his expression. "My dear boy, are you alright?"

Ed wasn't able to get out an angry retort as had been planned. A slight hiss escaped him, before the words, _'Oh hell,' _ran through his mind. Unconsciousness hit next.

* * *

><p><em>-(This part is in correlation to when McGonagall spoke to Harry, Ron, and Hermione about where they had heard about Ed and to keep an eye on him. Capeche?)-<em>

"Are you alright?" a voice asked him.

Hell no. Wasn't that answer obvious enough? He'd passed out, damn it! What did they expect? Him to be hopping around and singing? Although it was embarrassing to have passed out, even if it was only human.

"We hit you with a knock-out spell when you tried to leave prematurely. Couldn't have you running around the school half-dead, now could we?" the voice continued. He was sure it that Dumbledore person speaking. Albus Dumbledore. Minerva McGonagal. Severus Snape. God, who _named_ these people?

"You knocked me out?" Ed suppressed a groan as he sat up and opened his eyes. He was sitting in some sort of hospital room. They must've moved him. "Where am I anyway?"

"We went over this when you woke up the first time. You must've forgotten. You're in the hospital ward at Hogwarts. We put you in here after you collapsed while speaking to us in the halls. You woke up a few days ago, and tried to leave. However, since you were still wounded, we knocked you out until you would no longer be hazardous to yourself."

Ed shot him a glare. "Where the hell did you get the half-dead part from? I was not nearly that injured. Half-dead would be if I've just gotten run through with a heavy pole or if I were your age." Not like he'd been run with a pole before. No, never.

Dumbledore gave him a smile. "No, my age would be _past_ half-dead." Dumbledore became serious. "Why are you here at this school if you are not a student?"

Ed hadn't thought this far ahead. He hadn't had that much time to think things through anyway. "I was fighting with someone when they accidentally did some sort of odd spell and smacked us both onto opposite sides of the world. At least just me." Hey, he wasn't a politician for nothing. He was supposed to think fast. The problem now became he had next to nothing in the category of knowledge about magic. Hopefully what he'd just said was possible.

"I don't know if that's possible."

Or not.

"I can look into it, though. This is the first time I've heard of a spell doing that. You're lucky you're still alive. People normally die when spells go awry. Now, is there anyone we should contact?" Dumbledore asked calmly.

Ed kept his expression neutral. "No one who will respond."

Dumebledore nodded in acceptance. "I'm sorry. Did you know the person you were fighting with?"

"No. It was a random attack."

"Hm." Dumbledore thought for a moment, and then sighed. "Do you want to stay here as a student? If you have no one to go home to, then the Ministry will probably send you to a wizard orphanage, or wipe your memory and send you to a muggle orphanage. You don't have many options."

"Heh. First off: Who are we talking about? Second: They don't know about me yet. What they don't know won't hurt them." Ed gave a demented smirk.

Dumbledore blinked at the first part. "You don't... You're muggle, aren't you? That's why you're limbs are artificial."

"I'm guessing 'muggle' means someone who isn't a wizard," Ed guessed. Dumbledore gave him a 'more or less' sort of nod. "Then yeah. I'm not a wizard. However, I'm not getting sent to an orphanage."

Dumbledore sighed, and began to take something out of his pocket. "I never got your name, by the way."

Ed narrowed his eyes slightly, not letting Dumbledore notice that his eyes flickered toward the hand motion. "Edward Elric. Who are you?"

"_Obliviate._" A stick glowed, and a burst of light shot from the piece of wood in Dumbledore's hand toward Ed. With a snarl, he dodged backward, out of the bed, and Ed hit the floor. He clapped once, to Dumbledore's surprised expression, and then slammed his hands into the floor near him. The floor rushed up around him, creating a half-circle.

Dumbledore's voice came from the other side, slightly distant and echoing oddly, "I thought you said you weren't a wizard," with a bit of humor in it.

"I'm not," Ed replied. "I'm an alchemist."

"I've never seen alchemy like that before."

"Probably not. I use a faster version that a lot of people use." For most people, they had to draw out the whole array, and then activate.

"I can see that."

A pause lasted for a few seconds, before Ed said, "Who's the Ministry?"

"The governmental body for wizards. I find it odd that you're such a skilled alchemist, yet you don't know about wizardry. Although, I'll guess you had more time to study alchemy since you weren't worried about studying magic too. Where did you learn it from?"

A sweat drop eased down the back of Ed's head, and an amused yet nervous expression took form. "Um. From my teacher. And from books I read. Mostly from Teacher though. She was... quite good at teaching."

"A woman? Neither of you would happen to know Nicholas Flamel, would you?" Dumbledore inquired.

"Who?"

"That would be a no then. So, would you like to stay at the school? Even if you are just an alchemist and not a wizard, I think you'll find some things among the school that will be helpful to learn from. This is a school, after all. One of our professors does something along the lines of teaching alchemy, although it's called Potions. You met Professor Snape in the halls," Dumbledore said. "Would you mind putting the wall down?"

"Would you mind putting your... wood down?" Ed shot back with a pause.

"Fair enough." Dumbledore set down his wand on the nearest table, and Ed dropped the wall back into the ground.

"Look, I don't do well with other kids, and I don't play nicely with just about anyone. Actually, I tend to be some sort of hazard for any building. Also, I have things I need to get done elsewhere without interruptions." Ed stood from the floor where he'd crouched.

"I can assure you that there would be no interruptions, Edward. The students wouldn't even know you were here," Dumbledore said.

"Thanks, but..." Ed trailed off in his refusal. His gaze had trailed over to where torches lined the wall. He hadn't noticed them before, or at least hadn't taken note of them and processed. If they were using torches, then...

"Is something wrong?" Dumbledore inclined his head slightly.

"What year is it?" Ed frowned.

Dumbledore gave a small smile. "I doubt you went through time. As proof, the year is 1995.**"

Ed gaped slightly at him. "So I time-traveled, just in the opposite direction then I thought. No way in hell am I a hundred and five years old."

Dumbledore frowned, and cocked his head. "This isn't your year. This is definitely fascinating. Normally, I'd say that it may be impossible for you to get back, but since I've said a lot of things that you have disproved, I just won't say that."

"Yeah, I've had loads of people get disproved by me. If my needs require it, I'll pull off the impossible." Ed grinned. Then it flickered into a scowl. "Hell, if the year's different, then the only place I can really stay will be here. Technology will have moved ahead to the point where it'll be dangerous. What's in this for you?"

Dumbledore looked surprised. "Something in this for me?"

"Yeah. You. What's in this for you?"

"Can't it just simply be polite?"

"I doubt it."

"Hm." Dumbledore observed him for a moment, before saying, "A dark wizard named Voldemort is returning. He'll be gathering his forces to attack again, and try to take over. We won't let him. The Ministry doubts his resurrection, so-"

"His _what_?"

"His resurrection. He returned from the grave."

"No he didn't. Dead people don't come back to life," Ed said, glaring at Dumbledore.

"He wasn't completely dead. I'm not completely sure of the specifics, but he wasn't completely dead." When Ed made no comment, Dumbledore continued from where he'd left off. "Because they don't believe Harry Potter, who saw the resurrection, the Ministry is refusing to take action. Therefore, it makes it hard for us to do anything, but we do what we can. If Voldemort finds out about your alchemical talent, which won't go unnoticed if you enter on the other side of the world-and now, apparently, a different time, too-he will try to recruit you. And it won't be the sort of thing where you have any choice."

Ed sighed. "No one can force me into anything I don't want to do. A lot of people seem to think they can though."

"I am just putting it to you as I see it." Dumbledore looked like he was about to continue before Ed started speaking again.

"Who's the 'us'?"

Dumbledore paused. "Who?"

"You said 'it makes it hard for us to do anything'. Who's the plural?" Ed gave a small smirk, knowing that he'd caught Dumbledore in something he didn't want to be caught in. A habit of his anyway, and not something he had to try hard at.

"A group of people willing to fight." Changing the subject quickly, Dumbledore said, "What I meant by bringing up Lord Voldemort is that if you stay here, under protection, that will be one less person that can be used against us." Dumbledore expected Ed to protest that no one could 'use' him for anything. Instead he saw a flicker of something, but no retort.

"There's no where else I can go?" Ed asked, sounding resigned.

"I can't think of anywhere that would be safe." Or not an Order Headquarters. He didn't trust the newcomer enough to send him there. "If you're going to stay here-" Ed gave an irritable nod "-then we can probably get you set up here. I'll see to it." Dumbledore stood and left the room. Just before he did, he turned and closed the doors again. "I should mention, we don't know whether you're a wizard or muggle, although chances are you are a muggle. If you're a wizard, it would be advisable to take classes here. Even if you're not, it may still be a good idea to take the classes."

"Why?" Ed frowned slightly.

"The Ministry may become suspicious. They did, in fact, gain knowledge of you. If they think you're a wizard, they won't try to obliviate your memory and you won't have to attack them. It'll be best for everyone. We can arrange your schedule so that you don't take the classes that require you to be a wizard."

Ed got the feeling Dumbledore had been planning that all along. "Fine, damn it. Have it your way."

Dumbldore chose not to respond to that, and instead said, "I'll see that you can be settled in. I think we'll put you in Gryffindor..." He walked out of the room. Ed raised an eyebrow at him, not understanding the last sentence.

A few seconds after he left, and Ed muttered, "Why does the weird shit always happen to me?"

* * *

><p>* I want to be a manga character. Ever noticed that some of their healing abilities are, like, seven times our healing rate even though they're completely human? I'm just saying.<p>

** I got his age because he was born in 1899. Damn. He's almost a hundred years older than me, with some years difference. That's kind of creepy, when thought about.

Alright people, give an 'aye' if you've done this too: woken up, done something, fallen asleep, woken up again, and then finding the results of your actions and wondering 'when the hell did I do that?' That's what the part with Ed not remembering the part before waking up in the hospital ward is about.

Ah, and something to help clear up why the Truth is so willing to help the people he knows: 'Without his people, there is no king.' More or less, that's a quote from Ling. Can't remember the exact wording, though. Also, I give up on the Truth character I have right now. He's staying, people. I'm sorry, but you're going to have to get used to him. Part of the plot that will ensue has to have him like that. Now, I'm just going to say that this character is an AU character. There's nothing I can really do other than that. He's just too OOC, from the way things will go.

Next chapter will be up as soon as possible. This chapter was kind of rough, sorry about that. It just didn't like me. But do you want the story up or not, damn it?


	4. Ed's POV, 2

a/n: hello all. New chapter up. Duh. Last chapter had a change in it, because an anonymous reviewer pointed out something that I messed up on. When Ed fell backward, um, he wasn't supposed to have automail. So, whoops about that. Had to take it out. Thank you, anonymous reviewer. That would've confused the crap out of a lot of people if it'd stayed that way. And out of me, too.

I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist or Harry Potter, for various reasons.

* * *

><p>"The hell is <em>this<em>?" Ed asked irritably aloud.

"A robe…?" one of his roommates answered behind him. Ed glanced over his shoulder at him, then dismissed him. He wasn't completely sure which twin it was, but it wasn't like it mattered. If they would both _shut up _and stop _finishing each other's sentences_ it would be fine.*

"Sheesh, mate, what'd you think it was?" the other asked, peering over his shoulder. He jerked away as Ed threw a hand back that narrowly missed poking out the twin's eye. "Watch it!"

"I don't know, a bathrobe?" Ed muttered under his breath. The twins were really starting to tick him off. The old guy had said that there was someone else staying in this dormitory. He couldn't be as bad as they were, right?

"A bathrobe, he says!" The twin nearest him laughed.

"Some days I think so," the other twin said, nodding.

"Do you ever stop talking?" Ed asked, exasperated.

"Yes."

"Sometimes we're eating."

"Sometimes we're sleeping."

"Sometimes we're in the hospital ward for something awesome we did that blew up in our faces."

"Sometimes we're-"

"Okay, I get it," Ed interrupted. "Which one of you is who anyway?"

"I'm Fred, that's George," the twin apparently named Fred said, "of course."

Ed looked between the two for a minute. They seemed to be overflowing with energy and sarcasm. "What's the difference?"

"There isn't, until they start speaking. One has a slightly lower voice, from when he figured out a food we made wasn't completely edible, and went into the lungs instead of the digestive system. Took us a while to get it back out again, and whacked a bunch of things on the way up," Lee said as he walked in. His name he could remember, since he didn't have an annoying twin. "Magic's fun and useful, but it's not always got a bunch of finesse."

"Which one?" George asked.

"We both ate the Grumbling Troll," Fred reminded.

"And my voice is not higher than his," they said simultaneously.

Ed glanced between the three of them. "You're all going to drive me nuts, aren't you?"

"Absolutely!" Fred slung one arm around Ed from one side.

"Everyone else got scared out of our dormitory, and they managed to get away with it, since McGonagall had to side with them." George did the same thing Fred had on Ed's other side. Lee leaned against the wall behind him, and grinned.

"Yeah, that's what Dumbledore said, plus it was the only room that had space left." Ed attempted to slip out from underneath the two. Neither relented.

"So he stuck you in a dormitory with the three best people in Gryffindor! How lucky!" Lee continued grinning, even when Ed shot him a glare. "No one else understood our sense of humor and fun. The idiots will all go out of this school with no sense of humor, as much as we tried to teach them."

"No, they're probably all in psychiatric wards," Ed said.

"Aw, come on, why'd they be in there?" Fred asked.

"Because they're hiding from you."

"Well, Ian Ponkey** made it out alive, didn't he?" Lee shrugged, then looked at the two twins.

They both cocked their heads in opposite directions. "Hm. I think I've seen him. Maybe."

"He's probably hiding from us."

"Yeah, I'll bet that's it."

"You're not helping your case here," Ed growled. "Now get _off _me."

"The shorty has a temper apparently." Fred grinned again and backed off, raising both hands in mock defeat.

"_Who are you calling-_"

"A serious temper," George murmured to Fred.

"-_midget tiny little-"_

"He's got some big lungs to be yelling for this long," Lee said.

"_smaller than a-"_

"How much longer do you think he can go for?" Fred asked.

"_grain of sand-sized-_"

"We're probably going to figure out sometime in the next five minutes. Over that, and he'll be passed out on the floor," George said.

"_Are you even listening to me_?"

"More or less." Fred waved it off. "Jeez, is that going to happen every time we call you short?"

"_Don't even start with the-"_

"Apparently." Lee grinned. "We're all going to be deaf by the time the year's over."

"Ah, but we'll have lost it in fun!" George replied.

"It's fun to be picking on someone?" Ed snapped.

"Someone half our height?" Fred asked.

"Shut up already!"

"Shut up you four! We can hear you from down here!" a girl shouted from the commons. "Don't make me come up there!"

"She's already up most of the steps!" another voice added.

"Fine, fine!" Lee shouted past the door he'd left open on accident. He shut the door. "Those're the new prefects, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley."

"Our dear younger brother." Fred sighed. "He and his friends have all the fun, stopping Dark Lords from returning all the time and such, although that didn't work out last time."

"And meeting professional Quidditch players and playing in tournaments that they weren't supposed to be in…" George continued.

"Quidditch?"

The three stared at him.

"You don't know what Quidditch is?" Lee asked. "What have you been doing all your life?"

"My friend, you have yet to live. Come on, we'll show you Quidditch." Fred led the way out of the dormitory room. "It's Saturday, and we'll probably have the field for ourselves at this time."

"I'll see if anyone else wants to get out there with us," Lee said, walking ahead of Fred to the commons.

"And I'll go check with Professor McGonagall. She'll be mad at us if we don't." George went off in a different direction.

"And today, you will learn a marvelous game." Fred grinned at Ed. Ed got a bad feeling.

* * *

><p>"Duck!" someone nearby shouted. Ed dodged, and the broom flipped with him. Something flew overhead.<p>

"The hell is that?" he shouted in response at the person.

"Bludger!" Angelina, the team captain who'd agreed to come out to teach him, turned toward the twins. "Didn't you teach him anything about the game?"

"I think we told him which end to hold!" Fred snickered.

"I figured that out for myself!" Ed shouted back, and smacked a ball away from him that someone had tossed, obviously trying to get it through the hoops behind him. "And where to be."

Angelina frowned at the two twins, who shrugged and grinned. "Guess you'll be learning on the job, then. Okay, those two idiots are Beaters, and so are those two." She pointed across the field at the other two people holding bats. The rest of the players had come to a standstill, waiting for all the rules to be told. "Their job is to stop people from doing their job, basically. They hit people with the Bludgers. Dodge those, obviously, if one's aimed for you. It's their job," Angelina pointed at Harry and someone else, "to catch the Snitch, which is somewhere. Once the Snitch is caught, game over, whoever wins has the most points. The Chasers," she gestured to some people, "are supposed to get the Quaffle through the hoops. Your job as a Keeper is to stop them, which it seems you've already figured out. Got it?"

"I think. I was kind of forced into the whole thing anyway. I'm just trying to stay on this damn thing." Ed glanced down at the broom irritably. Fred and George had both given him a small demo of how to fly, and had spent about half an hour getting him on damn piece of wood. After that, they'd been able to get him in the air. It'd taken him a while, but he was pretty sure that magic actually did follow some sort of logic. For instance: the wood that the brooms were made of were specially designed to funnel air through the wood and propel whoever its rider was at the time forward. Pressure on certain parts of the wood could make it slow, speed up, or other things. People riding it from habit probably wouldn't notice what they were doing, but it was still what was happening. Once he figured that out, he'd had no trouble getting the broom into the air.

The players shot back into action, and continued the game. Balls flew across the field, and Ed smacked the Quaffel away nearly every time it came near. He'd gotten good at coordination after all the fights, and the broom reacted well to him once he understood how it worked. However, as the twins pointed out (much to his annoyance), having a longer reach would've helped him out. Bludgers almost never came his way, since the Beaters were focused on the Chasers for the most part.

After a while, Harry flew back onto the field, carrying a golden ball in his hand. He waved it, and Hermione shouted out "The Snitch has been caught!" from the sidelines. The players dipped down to the center of the field, and began locking the balls away, a task which proved difficult in the case of the Bludgers. It became a wrestle to get them in to place. Ed finally snatched one of them out of the air, threw it at the other one, which ricocheted off a post and slammed into the box. The other one rebounded back, and Fred caught it and got it strapped in.

"Lunch!" a team member decided, and ran off field happily, expecting the food. The rest of the group followed close behind, and Hermione met up with them at the entrance to the Quidditch field. They began to head inside, and most of them passed through the walls. Ed came to a halt, and frowned at the doors. He narrowed his eyes, and continued trying to walk in. Fred glanced back at him, as did George, and turned to the others.

"Hey, we'll catch up with the rest of you in a bit. We should show Ed the rest of the grounds while we're out here," Fred said.

Angelina began to say that the rest of them should go with them, before George said, "Go ahead, it won't take long. We're holding you all up from lunch right now."

Reluctantly, the rest of them continued on. Lee had known something was wrong, but a gesture from George inclined him not to ask right then. The twins turned to Ed, and simultaneously raised an eyebrow.

"Can't enter. Must be a muggle," Ed said, scowling at the doors. "This is annoying. I don't suppose there's an entrance without this crap on it."

"None that I can think of. They don't tell us stuff like that. Maybe we could ask Dumbledore if there's a way out of it." George walked to the doors, and Fred stayed behind.

"Dumbledore can probably take out the spell on one of the doors. I don't know how you're a muggle if you can fly a broom, but apparently you are."

"Yeah, I seem to be getting a lot of that recently." Ed stared at the door. He could probably find out a way around the barrier. There had to be some sort of gap in it. "How does this work?"

Fred cocked his head. "What do you mean?"

"How does it work? What does it do? What purpose does it serve?"

Fred blinked. "Well, um, it keeps muggles out. By making them want to be somewhere else, I think. So, they might suddenly get superstitious or have to go to the bathroom or whatever, but they won't want to go near the castle."

Ed glanced at him. The twin obviously didn't know what made the spell actually _work_. Jeez, weren't the wizards interested in the science behind what they did at all?

So, the spell must've been some sort of thing with the mind. It must've released something into the air that affected certain people, with something in the brain. Which meant that it was affecting only certain brains, which weren't blocked by electrical impulses in the brain that were in parts of the brain that must've been passed through the generations considering that families sometimes carried it for centuries. Certain combinations of genes probably created those impulses from what certain children picked up from their parents.

Therefore, the electrical impulses must have been possible to throw into action, if the brain was advanced enough, considering that he had already had a broom react to him even though it should have only reacted to wizards. When he had realized how it worked, it must have counted him as a wizard/witch since wizards/witches either subconsciously or consciously understood how the broom worked.

The spells were activated by the wands because their minds understood how it worked and what to do, like how the brain stem kept the body functioning without the conscious mind telling it to. It was probably the sort of thing where some people were smart, and others just didn't have it in them.

The question to get past the barrier must have been a certain amount of comprehension in the brain of what the wizards and witches stupidly called 'magic', when it was really just brain comprehension. So what would he need to know to-

Oh, there it went.

Ed smirked, and raised an eyebrow as all the mental confusion blocking him from continuing evaporated. Damn, he was good.

Fred blinked again, and followed after him as he strode through the doors of Hogwarts. "I thought you said you were having problems getting through."

"I was. I'm not now." He continued walking through the doorways. Enough of his mind must have been creating electrical impulses in the right places after he had had realized what the spell did to block the effect in the air that was entering his brain through breathing. The thought entered his mind that the part of the brain that understood magic was probably somewhere in the 90%+ of the brain that people didn't normally use.

Fred shook his head, and decided not to ask.

Ed stopped a few feet ahead of where he had started from. "Oh come _on_. How many damn wards are there?"

* * *

><p>"I thought they said that you were unable to get past the wards," Dumbledore said to Ed.<p>

"I figured out a way around it. Others probably won't be able to figure it out." Of course, since other people hadn't had some of the Truth's knowledge shoved in their craniums.

"What do you mean, you figured a way around it?" George frowned.

"I mean I found a way around it. It's the electrical impulses that are blocking witches and wizards from being affected by the wards. Muggles don't have those impulses, but if they can figure out the way behind the spell then the impulses that block the effect of the spell for witches and wizards spark up and also block the effect for muggles. Although all three terms are really redundant since a 'muggle' could hypothetically pick up a wand and use it if they could figure out all the science behind it," Ed said, like it made perfect sense.

In reality, he'd lost the other three about five seconds into it.

"Um, what?" Fred stared at him.

"Never mind," Ed sighed. "Some people'll never get it consciously, even if their subconscious does."

"It seems I'm not longer needed," Dumbledore said, and with a nod to each of them, he departed. The other three moved toward the Great Hall, their stomachs snarling at them to do so.

"So, basically, you made magic one big muggle thing?" Fred asked.

"Um, what?"

"You put it into muggle standards?"

"You weren't listening, were you? I explained why the term 'muggle', 'witch', and 'wizard' are all redundant when referring to them like muggles can't actually become a wizard or witch," Ed said, like he was explaining 2+2 to an ignorant child.

"You lost us. In both explanations. You know what, I think we can pass without knowing what you're talking about," George decided.

"Hear hear," the other twin said.

"I give up on you two." Ed threw his hands up in the air. "I'm just explaining what's happening in your heads."

"Dust collecting?"

Fred and George slapped hands.

"I'm beginning to think so." Ed rolled his eyes.

The next ten minutes were spent with the twins and Lee, who joined them when they entered the Hall, introducing Ed to just about everyone in the school with the exception of Slytherins. By the end, Ed was sure they were either a lot more students that he had thought there was, or he'd met everyone about five times.

Finally, they were able to get to the food. Hermione, Ron, and Harry immediately attacked them.

Hermione started by saying, "Ed? What happened when you met Malfoy in the hallway? You hid it well, but I think you knew what happened to him."

Fred, George, and Lee eagerly leaned in, and the twins said, "Oh do tell. What happened to the high-and-mighty-snotty-nosed-Malfoy?"

"Tripped over his own feet," Ed said, although his eyes glinted mischievously over the cup he was drinking from. Seconds later, he spit the liquid back out. "The hell is this crap?"

"Pumpkin juice," Ron said.

"Ew…" Ed looked like he was about to do something, but instead pushed the drink away from him. "How are you all not dead from poison yet?"

"Immune system build up," Hermione said sarcastically. The two snickered, while everyone else drew blanks although the term sounded familiar. The wizarding schools weren't all that picky on the subject of body functions. Harry was pretty sure it fought off stuff in the body. "You know what happened to him though, don't you? You probably did it."

Ed smirked. "Maybe."

"Must've been more than a simple tripping, from what I'm hearing," Lee noted. "Care to elaborate, anyone?"

"The ground decided it wanted to hang out with Malfoy's legs," Harry said. "Seriously, what'd you do to him?"

Ed glanced at Fred and George. "Even if I tried to explain, I don't think you'd understand."

"It's one of those head things again, isn't it?" Fred asked. Ed nodded.

"Alright all, we're not going to understand it because the language he'll speak in," George started.

"Is not known or recorded by humankind as of yet," Fred continued.

"And probably never will be since the only ones who understand it,"

"Are too busy confusing the hell out of everybody else and coming up with complex things,"

"To never have the time to do something as simple as writing it down,"

"So that the rest of us mortals may be able to understand them through reading it," Fred finished.

"You guys have got to quit that," Ed said.

"Never," the two said. Ed threw them an irked look.

"So, why can't he tell us now?" Hermione crossed her arms at the twins, and raised a challenging eyebrow.

"It's really complicated, and I think only he can understand what he's saying." Fred shrugged. "Just don't even try. Hey, Ed, do you have any classes with those three?" He nodded to Ron, Hermione, and Harry.

"I don't know. I can't take any of the classes that require a wand, so that takes out a bunch. Basically, I'm going to be taking about two years in one year because of the lack of classes I can actually take. Probably won't need a seventh year," Ed said while scribbling his schedule down on a napkin. He pushed it toward Hermione, who was closest.

"You don't have to take Umbridge's class. Lucky," she said. "She spouts a bunch of lies all day."

"Miss Granger, if you have something to say about me, shouldn't you say it to me?" a voice asked pompously from behind them.

"Depends on what she's saying," Ed muttered, taking another drink. The others wondered if he was going to remember it was pumpkin juice in time, but he didn't have any reaction to it.

Umbridge turned to him. "Mr. Elric, I presume?"

Ed cut her off. "Yup."

She ignored him, and continued with, "I have already adressed your friend on the issue, but seing as how you do not and will not be attending my classes, I think that I need to teach you in this matter as well."

Ed folded his arms and faced her in a 'bring it' pose.

"You will listen to the teachers here, and learn what we teach. Do not make absurd theories of your own, or disrepect the teachers here. Do you understand?" she asked.

"Wakarimasen,"** he responded in a different language. Umbridge looked at him, trying to detect a hint of mock in his expression, but turned around and left. When she was out of hearing range, he snickered.

"What did you say?" Hermione asked.

" 'I don't understand'," Ed replied. Some of the books he and Al had studied had been in different languages, and that was basically the only reason he could communicate. Amestrian was his base language, and this language was one of the first he had learned. Whoever invented the language was off their rocker, though. The language broke it's own rules way too much. "Ah, the humor that comes when knowing a language no one else knows..."

* * *

><p>an: *Tsuki and I do this all the time. And piss the people off around us too. It's fun. For us, anyway. Everyone else hates us for it.

**Japanese. Sorry, I know that Amestris is a parallel of Germany, but in respect for the original language it was done in (actually, I just don't know German at all, but I'm learning Japanese) I'm going to use Japanese as the Amestrian language.

I'm sorry about having Ed in a room with a bunch of people who aren't his age. But hush. If any more Eds are stuck in there, someone's going to have to sleep on the roof. Also, sorry about this being a bit of a geeky chapter. I just wanted to explain why he can get through some magic but not others. I hope it makes sense. If it doesn't, just... um, assume that it does, I guess. Damn, long chapter, but the next one's going to be shorter, for need of a good reason to stop.


	5. Ed's POV, 3

a/n: I'm admittedly a little surprised. I didn't realize I was posting this fast until I looked at when I'd first posted and my last post. Hm. Okay then. Ah, by the way, speaking of fast updating, summer break's coming up! Translation: I'll be posting _even faster_! Woowoo! So, in roughly four weeks, the updating will speed up. Of course, I'm not the only one. Can I get a hell yeah from all the other writers anticipating this?

Admittedly, the break in between these last chapters was enormous. For me, anyway. And then... a short chapter. I'm sorry! Truly! Longer one next time! I promise!

Note on the second chapter. It was meant to encourage mystery and curiosity. I think it inspired more of 'what the hell?' instead.

Moving on, even though anticipating and procrastinating are fun past times. I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist or Harry Potter, and neither does Tsuki even though she seems to think that she does. I'm not really sure why. (she lost it a while back. What she lost, we're not completely sure, but she hasn't gotten it back yet)

* * *

><p>(<em>seconds after Ed left the gate<em>)

_The Truth stared after where Ed had left. Ed, and another soul. The energy had pulled someone else through. And considering who that was, it wasn't going to end well. True, Ed might be able to fix the situation with some diplomacy and 'a fist to the face', but this person had had a lot more experience doing that. Also, this person wasn't known for letting people he wanted dead live._

* * *

><p><em>(<em>normal time)

"DA?" Ed frowned. "What?"

"Hermione asked us if you wanted to join the DA. She gave us a rundown about it on the Hogsmeade trip along with a bunch of others," Fred began.

"But since you weren't there, you didn't hear it," George finished.

"The DA stands for 'Dumbledore's Army'," Lee said, sitting on his bed. George and Fred were sprawled over theirs, and Ed was laying on his. "Harry's going to be teaching all of us the real Defense Against the Dark Arts."

"I can't use a wand," Ed reminded. "I'm not going to be able to help out."

"Yeah, but Hermione thinks that if you need to practice whatever you did to Malfoy and don't want Umbridge to figure out about it, then you'll have the room available to use," Fred said.

"Well, a portion of it. The rest we'll be using," George added.

Ed cocked his head at the three of them. He could figure out if he could combine magic and alchemy if he had more space to work on it without the annoying ministry official pushing her nose into his business all the time. Besides, he coded his work through reflex now, and it was written in a different language anyway. * Didn't mean it wasn't annoying. And it would be better if they didn't have a translation spell to rely on.

"Fine, I'll come. Might get some peace and quiet for once," he said.

* * *

><p>He barely looked to dodge a badly aimed spell. It seemed like he was doing a lot of dodging lately. The Transfigurations book he was holding was finally beginning to make sense. It was kind of like the wands had some sort of radioactivity that could mutate the animals or whatever they were using, and then had the cure to the radioactivity through their wands. Ed grimaced. He wished they'd had something like this for Nina.<p>

In fact, it was beginning to make enough sense that he wondered if…

If…

No. He'd just gotten his arm back. There was no way he was going to test something like that. However, reason told him that since apparently he had a neon sign that only trouble could see hanging over his head, he'd probably get into more fights before he got home, and even then he'd probably still get into enough fights that not having an arm he was used to fighting with could prove deadly.

He spent the next few meets of the DA making sure that he knew exactly what he was doing. After that, he gathered up enough metal in the same amount that had made up his arm. He knew that the ports were still in place, since his first night conscious and at Hogwarts had been spent poking his arm to see. Transfigurations normally wasn't for this kind of thing, so he'd probably be doing something really weird with it when he swapped his metal arm for his real arm. He hoped he didn't have to use it. It'd be kind of disgusting to be carrying around his real arm. At least there would be a higher chance of getting it back, since the nurse in the hospital ward would probably be able to mend it back together again.

"Hey, Ed?" Hermione said. From her tone of voice, she'd probably already said it a bunch of times. He looked up. "Come on, class is over."

"It is? Um, okay…" He stood, and walked out with the others.

Hermione didn't more away from him. "I'm muggle-born, and I think I'll understand what you said even if Fred and George didn't. They don't understand anything about muggle science."

"Well, the term muggle is kind of messed up, since any muggle could become a witch or wizard if their brains could understand the science behind it to the state where they knew it unconsciously," Ed said.

"Is that what you did?"

"Yup. My head does stuff like that a lot. So any really smart 'muggles', as you call them, can actually start using magic. And if any witch or wizard whacks their head enough times, they'll eventually lose their ability to do magic since it'll be smacked out of their head."

"So, what were you doing back then? Some sort of muggle form of science?"

"No. The alchemists here stopped too soon. Alchemy really can be a lot more than you've all made it. I was using alchemy when I tripped him. I reconstructed the molecules in the stone around his legs. That's what the scratch marks were from."

Hermione stared at him. "Could you teach us alchemy like that?"

"No. I've got other things I need to do. And besides, it wouldn't be that helpful in a fight. You'd have to draw out an array before each alchemical transmutation you made. In the end, it'd probably just kill you when you had your back turned," Ed said.

"You didn't use an array."

Ed gave a strained grin. "I'm a special case, I guess you could say."

Hermione didn't speak for a minute. "What did you mean by 'here'?"

"Huh?"

"You said that the alchemists here stopped too soon. Where's 'here'?"

"Um…" Ed was saved by Lee, Fred, and George bombarding him, and excitedly speaking quickly enough that Hermione couldn't make out what they were saying when they were all talking at once. Ed on the other hand knew that they were telling him they'd managed to find a cure to the nosebleed pills they had created so that the people who took them wouldn't keep bleeding out. Ed was ushered off, and Hermione was left standing there.

* * *

><p>He heard a snore, and sighed. The three other people in his room were seriously loud sleepers. He was pretty sure that they were going to blow someone's earsdrums out they were so loud one of these days. Now that he'd finished up with the Transfigurations, which had really only been a distraction, he was starting in on the alchemy he needed to accomplish. The teleporting spell they had must not work between worlds or something.<p>

_'Fullmetal.'_

Ed jumped. His eyes shot up from the papers sprawled around him. He looked around. No one was there. But someone was there. Like another presence in the room.

_'Not there, Elric. I'm in your head.'_

"I'm going to pretend that that's not creepy for a second, and ask who the hell are you?" Ed snapped into the air, quietly enough that he wouldn't wake one of the room's other occupants.

_'Blunt as always. Thought you would have figured it out by now, though.'_

Ed's eyes narrowed. "What do you want, Truth?"

_'Nothing, really. I'm just bored.'_

"Sure."

The Truth sighed. _'I guess there's reason for you to be suspicious. Nothing to really be done about it. Ah, take a look at the one paper to the right of the one on your knee. That equation won't work. Unless you want to be snail gunk, in which case it'll work perfectly well.'_

Ed glanced at the one that had been pointed out. Sure enough, it was messed up. He frowned, and made some corrections.

_'There you go. There's still a few errors, though. Especially in th-'_

"Why are you here?" Ed asked, cutting the Truth off. There was a pause, as if the Truth were debating on how best to answer. A few seconds, later, the voice in his head was gone along with the presence.

* * *

><p>The Truth returned to his normal area. He looked around where he was. Then he sat heavily and sighed. It hadn't gotten as badly as he had thought it might, but that didn't mean it had gone greatly either. Unsure as how to continue the conversation, he'd cut it off.<p>

He turned around and looked at the Gate. The reason he'd had to go. The reason he'd been able to go.

The one who resided at the Gate wasn't always the same person. In his case, he'd been an alchemist before the fall of Xerxes who had taken things farther than they should have again and again, and finally the Truth there had decided he had pushed it too far, and gave him the price to pay as spending the next millenias as the Truth. He would continue that way until someone else came along who fit the same price. What had happened to the previous Truth was a mystery to him. All he knew was that he'd also succeeded someone, and as soon as both of them had faded from the position of Truth, odd things had happened but there had been no trace of them.

In each case of someone succeeding the Truth, there had been a recurring theme. Each had been the best, or one of the best, alchemists of their time, before something forced their minds and bodies to snap under pressure. Each Truth before them had been able to do nothing but pull them from the world they were in and push the position on them, less they wreck havoc on the world they were in without a sane mind to control what they were doing.

Also in each case, the Truth had known the alchemist in question, had spoken to him personally through a mind contact the Gate allowed, and was willing to let the alchemist survive without simply killing him to finish off the problem.

Ed was beginning to fit all the requirements. The last one would occur when the extra person who had been pulled through met Ed, which would undoubtedly happen from the way their luck tend to went. Even if that didn't drive him mad, the results from the Ministry would. True, Ed was one of the best fighters out there, and could have taken smaller groups of the Ministry on, but not all of them at once. Especially if they called in dementors.

Things were going to reach a breaking point if the Truth didn't do anything. He could prevent it all from happening, or ease some things from happening if he tried hard, enough, but it'd have to be done quickly. Once he'd gone through, his time as the Truth began to pull to a close as the Gate began to reject him. He would have to choose the next Truth soon.

He just hoped it wouldn't be Ed.

* * *

><p>*Most likely Kanji style. Or Hiragana, but less likely. And Katakana for foreign words, when Kanji isn't being used. Yes, there are three alphabets the Japanese use. Don't remind me. My teacher is thinking that I should memorize them all. Just shoot me now or something. (Hiragana and Katakana I'm okay with. Kanji has <em>thousands<em> of characters_. _I'm screwed. Damn it, people, _figuratively_)

If you don't have anything else to read, and you want something witty to read, go check out the _Dresden Files_. Then we can all bitch together about the latest books. The first few aren't as good as the rest, but they get better as they go.

The whole thing with the Truth was basically sparked by an idea that was bounced off me in response to another story I wrote. That he'd originally been human before he'd taken the post.


	6. Ed's POV, 4, Amestris's POV, 1

a/n: back again... Don't own Fullmetal Alchemist or Harry Potter, which I thought was pretty obvious from the get-go anyway...

I was hit by inspiration. Like, with a sledgehammer. I had one thought. And then another. And then I had these freakishly awesome ideas just running into me from every which way. And maybe it would have been better if I hadn't had the whole Truth thing, but I had to because from what I had planned, he would actually be necessary. Now, not so much, but he'll probably have one more role before I kick him out. Oh, and this won't be all that serious. Not like I thought it was going to be. (I had been kind of...um...planning to...erm...torture Ed...yeah...sorry about that...Hey, I _told _you it was going to be serious! But now he's not, so don't kill me! He's not going to be tortured! Okay? Okay?)

* * *

><p>(<em>England<em>)

The Truth had been right. Equivalency was all but ignored on this world, to an almost insane level. He was surprised more people didn't die meddling with the magic. It seemed like they all should have been dead by then, but no, they were all standing around talking amiably, and in one piece too.

Ed sighed. The Truth, leaning on the wall behind him, raised an eyebrow. Even though he probably already knew what he was thinking, the bastard, Ed asked anyway. "And you said that magic won't help me this time?"

They were in the dorm room again. The twins and Lee were all elsewhere. Probably pulling some prank that they'd miraculously escape detention for.

"No. It won't. Not unless you can figure out how to use it completely, which I doubt considering your mind set about this sort of thing," the Truth responded.

"Jeez... Let's make this a little harder, shall we? Anything else important I should know about?" Ed asked irritably, but half-heartedly. He was concentrating more on the alchemical reaction, and almost passed off what the Truth said next.

"Yes. Some dead souls were carried through by the energy surge. One already has his body, and the others have a very good possibility of regaining theirs," the Truth said. "Ah, and the one who has his body back very much wants to kill you. In fact, he should be here any day now. He's sided with the Ministry, and the Ministry doesn't know about what he's planning to do. I didn't realize the other souls were here, since the one that got his body back had a stronger soul and overshadowed them."

Ed paused. "...What?" He turned to the Truth. "Who're the people who got out? The Homunculi?"

"No."

"Then who are they?"

"I can't tell you that. Actually, I shouldn't help you anymore than I should with this then I already have. The Truth's job has limits, and I've breeched them." The Truth's face remained impassive.

Ed stared at him. "The Truth's...job? You say that like you're not the only Truth."

The Truth gave him a grin. "Did I now? You know what, though? I think I'd like to spend some more time on the world's I look over. I've spent a bit long on this world. Maybe I'll spend some time looking into some other arrays going on. I might help with one similar to this..."

Ed grinned back. "Oh, really? Interesting. Let me know how it goes."

"I think you'll find that one out on your own." The Truth turned, and his arm started to disappear as he began to teleport.

"Truth. One more thing." The Truth paused, and looked back at Ed. "_Why_?"

The Truth stopped completely. He stared at Ed. "I've been at the Gate for years since I went mad. The previous Truth retired his job to me to keep me from destroying everyone in my world. If I hadn't given you the help I have, you would've followed in my footsteps. You still may. Someone's taking my place soon. I'd taken a liking to you after the second time you visited, and decided I might give you a hand. And after the first trip here to see if you would replace me, you kind of became like a friend to me. I hope you won't be the next Truth."

He vanished.

* * *

><p>"Someone new is coming to Hogwarts," Hermione said. "I heard it from Professor McGonagall. She said someone working with the Ministry is going to come in, and is looking for someone. The person's a fugitive, and is hiding here. It's got all the teachers on edge."<p>

"What? Who's hiding here?" Harry's head snapped up quickly enough that onlookers winced at the whiplash he would be having.

"Not you, Harry. McGonagall told me that much. That's why she told me in the first place. So that I could tell you, since you weren't going to have her class before they began the search. All classes are being cancelled while they search the school," Hermione said. The Weasley twins glanced at each other.

"Hey, this time-"

"It's not us," the twins both said. Hermine and Ginny rolled their eyes at them.

"Do that anymore, and who knows?" Fred said.

"They might get stuck!" George finished.

Ginny tossed a bread roll at them.

"When are they going to be here?" Ed asked, one of the few able to stay on topic.

"Sometime tomorrow."

* * *

><p>(<em>Amestris<em>)

The Truth leaned against the wall behind him. "So, you're looking for a way to connect the two worlds through identical markings. Odd enough that it won't be replicated again, unique enough that it's never been used before, yet not complicated enough to be able to be flawed. It will be able to be used multiple times. One version of it that I've seen was a bunch of massive rocks, used to connect these worlds a long time ago.* Unfortunately, the rocks on both sides have deteriorated differently, and are now impossible to use. The ones on this side are buried under sand and the ones on that side are missing some rocks. It would be easier to just use a different portal connection. Fullmetal's working on another one over in his current world."

"Why the hell are you doing this?" Izumi demanded. "You've never helped us before, and suddenly, all this."

The Truth sighed. "I've explained this already. Fullmetal'll repeat it when you see him, okay? His portal should be complete sometime soon. Now, do you want my help or not?"

* * *

><p>(<em>England<em>)

"Students and professors. Our guest has arrived," Dumbledore's voice rang out in the dorm room, even though he was no where nearby. "He and Professor Umbridge, along with a group of Aurors, will be searching your rooms for a fugitive who has gone mad, and wishes the wizarding world harm. Please cooperate with Major Kimblee." The voice stopped.

"Hn. Never heard of him," Lee shrugged, and fell back on his bed. "Well, unless one of you's the fugitive, we've got nothing to hide. Uh...Ed?"

Ed stood from his bed, and stared at the door. "Kimblee?" he snarled. "_That's _who they're listening to? _He's_ the maniac they should be looking out for!"

"Ed? Have you lost it?" George asked. However, if one looked closely, he was smiling slightly.

"No, but Kimblee did a long time ago!" Ed started walking toward the door.

"Hey!" Fred grabbed his arm. Ed began to shake him off, before George came to his support.

"I don't have time for this!"

"Listen!" George snapped. "What're you even planning to do? Go charge a guy with Ministry officials backing him?"

"What else! I'd like to see them do anything about it!"

Lee stood up. "Then let's go help you. I was waiting to see what'd you do, in case they were telling the truth or not. That many of you can't be crazy."

Ed halted his protests, and turned to Lee. "Who? Ghosts?"

"Yeah. How'd you know?" Fred asked. "Did they find you?"

"No. Someone else did. Who're the ghosts?"

"Is Kimblee really going to blow us all up if he gets his way?" Ed nodded. "Normally, I'm all for the explosions, but not when I'm in the middle of them," George said.

Fred grabbed his wand, and started toward the door. "Well, come on then. I trust you. Let's go kick some military officer from another dimension's sorry butt!" He glanced at Ed. "Not you, the other one."

Ed stopped. Suddenly, he got the feeling that he knew _exactly_ who all had come through as a ghost. "Fred, George, Lee... Who are the ghosts?"

"Colonel Hughes, Captain Buccaneer, and Fu. That was all they gave us, namewise. We met them a while back during one of our pranks, and they were asking us where you were. We asked why, and after two hours-it was a long story-we told them where they probably were," Lee said, "Major."

"They told you everything, then?" Ed asked.

"Just about. They mentioned when they had gotten here, and we realized that that was around the same time you got here, so we mentioned that you were here. They were all over us to find out where you were," Fred said.

"When did you see them?" Ed asked, a grin making its war to his face. Damn, did they have some problem with dying or something? Well, of course, but this was kind of ridiculous. Even better, hadn't the Truth said that they had a possibility of regaining their bodies? With a price or without? He'd find out later, after kicking some Kimblee ass...

"A few hours ago. You weren't in the Great Hall, were you?" George sighed.

"No." Ed laughed. "Actually, I was trying to find the way back home. Come on, school's going to be under attack in a few minutes. We can reminisce later."

* * *

><p>"No, don't back me up. I can handle myself. Besides, I've fought him before and lived to say it now. I'll do it again," Ed said, trying to push off the aid of the DA.<p>

Fred and George looked like they were about to protest again, but Hermione stepped forward. "Fine. Don't get hurt."

"Don't plan to." Ed turned, and walked out of the room.

The others turned on Hermione. "Isn't this what Harry's been teaching us for? To fight?"

"No, I've been teaching you to fight the Death Eaters and Voldemort, not the Ministry. They're not the enemy," Harry said. He turned to Hermione. "But I still think we should help Ed."

"We're going to. We know this school better than he does, and I can guess where the Ministry will look first. Come on," Hermione said, and walked out of the Gryffindor common room.

* * *

><p>"Professor!" Cho called, running up behind the group in front of them. A few other DA members followed her, not including people thought 'suspicious' by Umbridge. Hermione, Ron, and Harry were not among the running group, definitely being 'suspicious'. None of the other Gryffindors were among the running group, either.<p>

The group of Aurors, plus Umbidge and Kimblee, turned around, wand owners pointing their wands at the children running toward them.

"What are you doing here? You should be in your dorms!" Umbridge exclaimed. "Ten points from each of your Houses."

"Professor, please, Major Kimblee is not here to do what he says he is," Susan said.

"I can quite assure you that he is, Miss Bones. Now, if you would please escort yourselves back to your dorms, we can capture the fugitive running loose in the school. Major Kimblee has been with the Ministry for months now. We know his motives to be pure."

"Oh please. Give me a break. The day Kimblee's got pure motives will be the day the world ends," someone said. "And for real that time, too."

Umbridge turned quickly to the voice. "You, ghost. Who are you?"

"Ah, Brigadier General. Hm. Odd condition you're in, I must say," Kimblee said, attracting the attention of those in hearing range. "Of course, you're in the right here about my motives. Tell me, how did you end up ghostified, if that's even a word?" **

"Killed by a Philosopher's Stone. Did something weird to the souls that doesn't happen to people not that close to a Stone when they die, and now we can walk through walls," a different voice said.

Kimblee cocked his head over one shoulder, and smiled. "Lieutenant Colonel."

"Unappreciated," the last ghost said.

"I don't believe I ever learned your name, Xingese," Kimblee cocked his head, looking at the last ghost.

"It's Fu, you bastard."

Everyone turned at the newest, and familiar voice. Ed was walking toward them, red cloak, Amestrian clothes, and combat boots on. He shot an irritable glance at the DA members. "What the hell about 'stay out of this' do you people not get?" Shaking his head, he turned to the ghosts. "The three you spoke to mentioned I'd find you somewhere in the castle. The Truth said you'd be able to get your bodies back."

"I really hope I wasn't cremated, then," Buccaneer said with a grin.

"I am not inhabiting a pile of ashes either," Fu agreed.

"Mine's going to smell so bad," Hughes sighed. "Heard that it was buried."

"Hm. Happy reunion. Moving on, you may want to listen to them, and get out of here if you have any intentions of getting out of here alive and not in a matchbox," Kimblee said the last sentence to the Ministry officials and DA members.

"Excuse me?" Umbridge asked incredulously.

"Simply put, I'm here to finish what I meant to do in the first place: kill the ones trying to revent the Homunculi from using everyone in Amestris as a Philosopher's Stone." Kimblee smiled cheerfully.

"Actually, Kimblee, that's kind of stupid. All the homunculi are dead now," Ed said.

"What?" U,bridge looked around blankly.

"Look, lady," Ed sighed. Umbridge shot him a glare. "Skidaddle already. Vamoose. Leave. You're in the way."

"And you're not?" Umbridge sniffed. "Children have no place in the line of battle, if Major Kimblee is indeed planning to kill people." As she finished that sentence, the Aurors began raising wands against Kimblee.

Hughes gave her the smile people usually reserve for when patiently explaining something to an ignorant child. He threw out a transparent arm in front of Ed, who respected the authority of the arm, and stopped from going into a yelling match at Umbridge. "Ed _is_ the one he's trying to kill. It would be redundant to send him away. And besides, he's the only one who can really-oh never mind."

Kimblee, apparently deciding that he was bored of people talking (or was just using it as a distraction), clapped, and threw his hands out in front of him. The Aurors were blasted backwards, and through several walls. The DA members began to fire off spells, along with Umbridge, and Kimblee blasted a massive hole in the ceiling. Debris fell, and piled up in a barrier between the wizards and the Amestrians and Xingese.

"Well, that takes care of them." Kimblee turned to the ghosts and Ed, already clapping. Ed responded, ducking and simultaneously creating an uneven surface out of where Kimblee stood. The alchemist in white stepped sideways to regain his balance, and shot his hands out in front of him. Ed dived under the blast, and the ghosts moved forward, through the wave.

It was just like the battles in Amestris.

Besides that there were moving pictures yelling profanities at them.

Oh yeah, besides that. And the whole castle-with-moving-staircases.

Ah, and angry wizards.

"Stupefy!" The spell shot through the ghosts, and barely missed Kimblee. Kimblee glided to one side, and responded to the attack. Ed glanced back in time to see Snape dive behind a wall to miss the deconstruction wave.

"Those wands are really kind of annoying, aren't they?" Kimblee asked, preparing to create another barrier between them. Fu charged through him unexpectedly, and Kimblee, out of sheer reflex, blew up the wall behind Ed instead.

"Watch it, Fu!" Ed shouted, and the ghost rolled its eyes at him. Fu cocked his head suddenly, and a sly grin showed through the mask. Then he vanished through the floor. Ed bolted toward Kimblee, and knocked an arm away to prevent it from connecting with the other. He'd prefer to not be in a pile of limbs, thank you very much.

Ed grabbed a bag out of his pocket, and lightly tossed it into the air. He clapped his hands together, and grabbed the bag as it began to fall. The normal blue hue of an alchmical reaction flew up around it, and materials flowed out of the bag, and around Ed's right arm. As they did, the bone, sinew, blood, muscle, skin, and everything else that made up his arms began to fall away, to resemble what was beginning to flow around his arm. The two flows of material switched places, the flesh and blood flow going into the bag, and the other taking the place of his flesh and blood arm.

The result was the return of the automail arm that the Fullmetal Alchemist was so well known for.

Kimblee destroyed the ground below Ed, just as McGonagall shouted, "Petrificus Totalus!" The shot of light was thrown aside by the explosion that slammed into it.

"Protego!" Flitwick squeeked, and the explosion slammed to a halt at the barrier in front of the wall of professors who had gathered at the end of the hallway, wands out. As soon as the explosion dissapated completely and the barrier fell, ghosts swarmed out of the walls, ceiling, and floor, led by Fu and flying toward Kimblee. Ed dodged out of the way, not to avoid the corporeal substances, but instead for what they distracted for.

"Levicorpus!" Snape shouted, and a light slammed into Kimblee. He staggered backward in surprise, and the second one of his feet left the ground, it flew up into the air above him.

Hughes backed off, along with the other ghosts, and let of a burst of laughter. "Kimblee, you look kind of ridiculous like that."

Kimblee threw him an angry glance, and, still upside down to the humor of all but him, he clapped and threw out another blast at the professors. Again, Flitwick shielded against it. The barrier of rocks disappeared, as Umbridge and the DA students finally managed to get rid of it without killing everyone on the other side of it. Kimblee whipped around in the binding on his ankle and prepared to through a blow of decomposition at the new side.

With a shout, Ed leaped forward, throwing out the knife that had formed on the end of the metal arm into one of the hands that had come together in the clap. Kimblee jerked out of muscle reflex, accidentally throwing the knife off.

Ed and Kimblee stared at each other, and then at where the knife had gone through the hand, and then through a spot right below the collarbone. A fatal wound.

Kimblee looked back at Ed. "Don't worry. I'm taking all of you with me." He thrashed, throwing Ed off, and swiftly redrew the destruction circle using his own blood on the floor above which he was hanging with his remaining and functioning hand. Both hands moved down to activate it.

* * *

><p>*Stonehenge.<p>

**Well, spell check didn't say anything about it, so it must be.

Let me know how many times I surprised you all in this chapter!

Yes, I did have Kimblee get hit with the Levicorpus just to have him hang in the air.

It was a bit rushed, I know. But there was just no way to extend it out much farther.

So, 'Accio' is a summoning charm, right? So then, what would happen if, say, "Accio Central HQ" was said? (It's completely irrelevant to the story, I promise you, but I'm curious)

Thank _Rise Against_'s 'Help is on the Way' for this. I listened to it the whole time while typing this out. Had no particular meaning to the story, but it's still a good song. So there.


	7. Ed's POV, 5, Amestris's POV, 2

a/n: this chapter and the last one were actually partially written at the same time. Kind of weird, no? All of you better be appreciative of the last one, because it was posted at _three in the friggin' morning on a school night when school starts at seven_. Of course, I'll no longer have grumbling rights about that, since-

_School's OUT_! Woohoo! Expect faster updates now. Nothing like the _Why to Continue_, where a new chapter was up every few hours since they were all written in advance, but still faster. Or not, since I've spent the last few days of summer break sleeping...

Don't own, people. Kind of obvious there.

* * *

><p>(<em>Amestris<em>)

"Are we just trying to inspire irony here, or is there a reason behind doing this here?" Izumi asked. At the moment, they were standing below where'd they'd fought the Father. 'They' were Izumi, Al, newly promoted Lieutenant General Mustang, newly promoted Lieutenant Colonel Armstrong, and a few subordinates passing through occasionally to drop off supplies they needed, like chalk or food or anything else.

"It's out of the way, and no one will stumble on it accidentally," Mustang said. "Did the kid have to make it this big?" He glanced around the room, covered in intersecting lines running all over the place.

"Apparently, this is his definition of 'simple'," the Truth, leaning against a wall, said. "It also took both of you about a week to make it complete. Although, he doesn't have any sort of way to tell whether or not you are accurate, and I think he'll change some things."

"He hasn't changed anything else yet, has he?" Al asked. "Not since you gave us the array he used?"

The Truth shook his head. "No, nothing. I think that-" The Truth froze. He stood still for about half a minute before pushing off the wall, and saying, "I need to go. Now." He tapped the ground with one foot. Wisps of something flew up around them, and gathered to hover above their heads by about seven feet. "This is a model of what his array is like. It'll show any changes he makes as he makes them. Your array is still slightly off, but make the few changes I told you about, and it should be operable sometime soon. The portal will probably work best if opened from his side."

"You're not coming back?" Izumi guessed.

"Won't be able to." He cocked his head and sighed. "I thought it was taking a long time for them to try and kill each other..." As he trailed off, the Truth vanished from their world for the last time.

The alchemists stared at where he left from. "Did he mean that Brother irritated someone..." Al thought aloud.

"Or was it someone already irritated? If an energy release was big enough to wipe out both worlds, then only carrying one person over might have been under the limit for something like this," Izumi finished. "Someone else went through with him."

* * *

><p>(<em>England<em>)

Right before his fingers brushed the array, Kimblee's hands stopped short. He cocked his head in sudden surprise, staring at the hands suppressing his own. He glanced up at the face who owned them. "Ah, Truth. What brings you here?"

"You do, alchemist Zolf Kimblee," the Truth said, yanking Kimblee's arms back up from the floor. "Mostly insane, ready to kill everyone and take them out with you. I'd prefer to avoid that. But...does that sound familiar from somewhere?" Kimblee raised a questioning eyebrow, and the Truth gave a small smirk before looking over his shoulder at Ed and cocking an eyebrow.

Ed grinned. "Yes, yes it does. Guess it's not going to be me then."

The Truth cocked his head, and gave a grin. "Nice to be working with you for as long as I did, Ed." He looked up at the ghosts. "Your bodies will call you back soon. If you enter them at the right time, you can possibly do a complete resurrection, and live out the rest of your lives."

"As long as we don't die from the stink of decomposition," Hughes added.

"Well, there's that too, but keep in mind that you're also standing in a school of magic right now. You'll probably be able to reverse the process, at least somewhat." The Truth glanced down at Kimblee, and then back to Ed. "The array's ready on both sides. Activate it whenever you can."

The Truth and Kimblee vanished.

"Well then," Hughes said. "I guess that takes care of that."

* * *

><p>"And do you have any proof?" Umbridge asked in a haughty tone of doubt.<p>

"Yeah. The alchemy here's crap, and they should've done a lot more with it," Ed said.

"Excuse me?" Fudge raised an eyebrow.

"He couldn't use the magic stuff here worth crap. So then what'd he do when fighting Kimblee?" Buccaneer asked. "Also, you should be less focused on us, and more focused on the dead guy walking around."

"You-Know-Who is _not _back!" Fudge shouted.

"Who came up with these names?" Hughes asked, slightly exasperated. "You-Know-Who, The-Boy-Who-Lived. What's going to happen when someone _doesn't _know who you're talking about with the Dark Bathrobe guy, or when Harry Potter dies from old age or something? What are you going to have to say then? The-Boy-Who-Lived-And-Then-Died?"

"Why are the ghosts here, Dumbledore?" Fudge rounded on the Headmaster.

"They're Amestrians, too. This decides their fate as well," Dumbledore said simply.

"They're ghosts! They're _dead_!" Fudge shouted, exasperated.

"Not for much longer," Ed muttered.

Fudge, not hearing anyting but a mutter, glanced at him, and then back to Dumbledore. "Really! This is insanity! Other worlds? Gods who come down on the planet to take up the next god? Honestly, everyone! You can't really be buying this!"

"Oh no, Prime Minister! Some of us aren't!" a redhead said. Ed rolled his eyes.

"I think it has a sort of sense to it. What our magic does has excess parts to it that don't get used when we cast spells. That excess has to go somewhere, doesn't it?" Dumbledore thought aloud.

"This is absurd!" Umbridge said loudly.

"I think that this whole conversation is ridiculous," Buccaneer said. "So what if that is what we think? How does that affect you, whether or not we want to get back home or not? Maybe we'll kill ourselves trying to get home, but that won't matter to you. At the worst, we'll be out of your hair."

"Because if you're not telling the truth, then he will be sent to Azkaban," Umbridge snapped. She was pointing at Ed.

"What?" the blond alchemist raised an eyebrow. "I suppose you don't recall the psychotic guy trying to kill you all, then? Has that particular person slipped from your memory?"

"What would you even be arresting him for?" Hughes asked. "As far as I can tell, all he did was save your ungrateful butts."

"Destroying school property, murdering someone who was at the time restrained, and others we probably have not even considered yet," Fudge said triumphantly.

"You're joking, right?" Hughes sighed. "First of all, Kimblee destroyed more school property than Ed did. Second, he wasn't very restrained of he could still create an alchemical array to kill everyone, and Ed never really killed him. The Truth took him before he died. And third, I don't think there's anything else you can arrest him for. Besides, wouldn't you have to take him before that jury thing I heard about from a student? How many do you think would vote to send him?"

"Rules can be changed," Fudge said irritably.

"Of course they can, when the Minister's an ass," Hughes said in such a reasonable tone, those listening almost didn't understand completely what he'd just said. Ed snickered as a puzzled expression on Fudge's face turned angry.

"What did you just say?" Fudge seethed.

An explosion went off somewhere in the school.

"Hey, it wasn't my fault!" Ed shouted as the three ghosts looked at him. "For once."

Fu dropped through the ground. He reappeared a minute later. "Kimblee must have destroyed the supports for one part of the castle. It's gone. I don't think anyone was there when it collapsed, though. It wasn't a very big portion of the building."

* * *

><p>(<em>Amestris<em>)

Al drew one of the lines they had missed. He stood up, and looked around at the others. It seemed the array was now exactly the same as the one above it. Izumi glanced around from where she was, and exchanged a nod with Al. They both moved off the array, and looked at the others who were finishing up. Within a few minutes, they were all standing on the side lines of what they had created. A few other people, Havoc and Breda, were also there to give an update to Mustang on something that had happened.

"The rest is up to the kid, then," Mustang said about the array when he had been briefed on something Scar and Miles had accomplished.

"One thing is bothering me about this," a voice said. The five of them turned to see General Armstrong carrying a clipboard and Winry walking toward them. "Why hasn't he activated it yet? It seems like he only has limited time to do it."

"We asked the Truth about that. He said it was because Ed was doing something during the day that he had to do if he wanted to keep up continuous access to the room he was using to build the array," Al said. "I think he said something about 'schoolwork' too."

"And I'm sure Ed was thrilled about that." General Armstrong smirked.

"I feel sorry for the teachers. At least he didn't have to time to do anything destructive when I was teaching him," Izumi said. "If they're giving him regular schoolwork, he'll be doing something destructive almost 24/7. Might not even have a building left."

"Our teacher retired shortly after we passed through," Winry said. She had been there in Central since Al had heard they would be building the array and had told her. "It's definitely not going to end well for the teachers he now has, especially since he hasn't been in a classroom in years."

"Not to mention the other students," Mustang added. "So what are you doing here, General?"

"Heard you were making some portal down here, and I wanted to see how it was going. Should it be operable anytime soon?"

"It is now. Who told you we were making this?" Mustang frowned.

The general stared at him for a second. And then she whacked him hard (_very_) over the head with her clipboard. Several times. Then she passed it to him, on which there was a note. :

General Armstrong

Fort Briggs

An alchemical array is going to be finished soon to bring the Fullmetal Alchemist back.

It's below where the Father was killed.

Kisses and Hugs

Lieutenant General Mustang

When he could see straight again and actually read the note, he looked up at Armstrong seriously. "I didn't write this."

"I know. You wouldn't have been so blunt about what was going on. Even you're not that stupid. Do you think the Truth wrote it?"

"Probably." Mustang looked back down at the note. Then something occurred to him, and he looked up irritably with a tick mark on his head. "Hey, if you knew I didn't send this, then why-"

"Anyway, so I came down here to see if it was finished or not, since it wouldn't be a good idea to send any more notes about it," General Armstrong said. "Even if they were coded. Also, I wanted to find out who actually sent the note."

Something flashed up above. They all looked up, and saw destruction sweep like a tidal wave across the array Ed had built. Rocks tumbled down on it, and parts of the room the array was in were tossed around. In seconds, the array was gone.

"Oh. Oh _hell,_" Breda said.

* * *

><p>(<em>England<em>)

"What's all this?" Fudge sniffed. "Just a bunch of lines." He turned to Dumbledore. "Headmaster, what was being created here?"

"This part of the building was unused. There shouldn't be anything of the sort here," Dumbledore said, obviously confused.

The wreckage of what was left was all on the bottom level of the castle, at the just the right spot to be able to be destroyed but still not take the rest of the castle down with it. Rocks were piled against the walls, and spots of the floor and walls had been ripped away to show the dirt and clay underneath. Some of the ground was scattered across the tiles, or splashed up against the remainders of the walls. In various places, white lines that had probably made sense at one time were now smeared, destroyed, and mangled. They had had to use a spell to get underneath all the rock that had been obscuring it.

"He did leave at one time, now that I think about it, to go and check something out on his own. We heard some odd sounds, but when he came back he said everything was okay. He left right around when we passed over this spot," Umbridge said.

"Three guesses. One: This was our ticket home. Two: This was our ride home. Three: All of the above," Buccaneer said, glancing at Ed.

"Yeah. This was the way we were going to get home. Of course he had to find it," Ed sighed, irritably rubbing the back of his head. "Kimblee probably figured this was where I would put it, since we're not entirely sure if it won't explode when we try to use it. He destroyed just enough of it that the reverberations of his explosions knocked it off. He couldn't use it to get home, and he couldn't get caught before he tried to kill me, so he only mildly destroyed it and let it self-destruct later. It probably just went off balance enough and eroded away what was left while we were up in the office. The bastard's a sore loser. And of course, I now can't punch him in the face since he's now a god."

"That's a horrible thought right there," Hughes said. "Why couldn't he use it? He's an alchemist too."

Ed grinned evilly. "Cause that's how I created it. I'm the only one who can use it, since I'm the only one who understands how it works. It would have taken anyone else a long time to figure it out. The previous Truth told me someone else was here, so I made sure they couldn't use it and then destroy it. So, Kimblee skipped the using it part and went right to destroying it."

"Can you rebuild it?" Fu asked.

"Yeah. I remember the array. Spent a long time on it, too."

"I still don't believe that this is all-"

"Look, hypocrite." Ed rounded on Fudge. "We really don't care. You've stated your opinion, we've heard you out, and we really don't care. If you have anything else to say other than what you've already said, then I guess we might listen to you again. But you don't, so shut up."

" 'Hypocrite'? In what way am I a hypocrite?" Fudge scoffed.

"Let's see. The whole wizard thing. If the last Truth hadn't explained it, I'd be busy disproving all of you every five seconds. You say our alchemy's impossible, yet I would've said your magic's impossible. You're trying to put me in this random prison that apparently hasn't worked as well as you thought it would be able to, and have guards stationed there that might not be under your control. Also, I still don't understand _why_ you're trying to put me in there, when your Aurors have destroyed more property than I have. Honestly, you give someone that much control with a piece of wood, and then you let them loose, something's going to blow up. Yes, they have probably repaired what they destroyed, but so did I. Hypocritical? Hell yeah."

"Our Aurors don't destroy many things in the apprehension of dangerous criminals-" Umbridge began, barely finishing before Ed cut her off.

"Have you destroyed any property?" He pointed at a random Auror, who hesitantly nodded. "What about you?" He turned to another one, who also nodded. "And you?" It went on down the line like that, barely any not saying yes. "And I'm guessing you've all repaired what you did?" Only a few out of those who said yes nodded that time. "Oh come on, people. Really? You don't even repair what you destroy?"

"Hey, people had to peer pressure you into repairing what you destroyed in fights," Hughes muttered.

"The point is that I still repaired all of it," Ed put in irritably.

"You explained why you're here, but not who you are," Dumbledore said. "I think that might explain some things these Ministry officials are confused about."

"Headmaster Dumbledore, we are not confused about anything. These people are just imbeciles!" Fudge shouted, arms waving.

"And hand gestures too! Although admittedly, imbecile is a new name on me. Never been called that before. It's always been the short comments, or the annoying ones instead..." Ed grumbled.

"He admits it!" Hughes whispered loudly to Dumbledore and Buccaneer, who happened to be standing on Hughes's right side.

"I do not! I'm not short! I'm perfectly tall for my age! I do not need to drink anymore milk!"

"Who mentioned any milk?"

"You just did!"

"I'm sure he'll grow," Fu said. Ed nodded enthusiastically. "About an inch."

"You-!"

"Headmaster Dumbledore's question was never answered," Umbridge simpered.

"Long story, that's why," Buccaneer said. "Really long story, especially if you don't believe us."

"Then simplify it!"

"Fine," Hughes said. "Fù shì yī míng jǐngwèi de wángzǐ-" _(Chinese/Xingese: Fu is a guard for the prince-)_

"What?" Fudge and Umbridge asked simultaneously.

Fu enthusiastically nodded. "Méicuò. Wǒ suǒ fúwù de shàoyé líng yào, suí zhe wǒ de sūnnǚ. Wǒ bù rènwéi qícái zhèlǐ liǎojiě zhè mén yǔyán ne? Kǎolǜ dào tāmen de kùnhuò biǎoqíng."_ ( (This translation I know is slightly off) Chinese/Xingese: Exactly. I serve Young Master King Yao, along with my granddaughter. I don't suppose the wizards here understand this language, considering their confused expressions. )_

"What are you saying?" Fudge said in exasperation.

"Technically, it would have to be told in Xingese, since that is Fu's country's natural custom," Hughes said with an innocent expression on his face.

"Jetzt erfinden Sie aber Schwachsinn," Ed said. _(German/Amestrian (I finally sided with you people who said it should be German, because it should be no matter how lazy I am) : Now you're just making crap up.)_

"Tā shì zhèngquè de. Wǒmen méiyǒu rènhé dōngxi, shènzhì yuǎnchéng zhèyàng de," Fu said._(Chinese/Xingese: He's right. We don't have anything remotely like that.)_

"Natürlich. Denn wir können es nicht einfach für sie machen, oder," Hughes responded easily. _(German/Amestrian: Of course. Because we can't make things simple for them, now can we? No, no, we can't.)_

"Can you please translate what you are saying?" Umbridge asked, exasperated.

"Wenn du mir tausend Dollar/Euro gibst, vielleicht." _(German/Amestrian: If you give me a thousand dollars, maybe.) _

"Ed, spielen mit den jüngeren, ignorant schön, Kinder. Auch wenn sie nicht unsere Zeit wert," Hughes sighed. _(German/Amestrian: Ed, play nice with the younger, ignorant, children. Even if they're not worth our time.) _"So, since we must resort to other methods since the rest of you are apparently not bilingual, Fu is a protector of a Xingese prince, who at this rate will probably be emperor sometime in the near future. Buccaneer, Ed, and I are all from the Amestrian military. Buccaneer works in Briggs, a fortress to the north between us and Drachma, I've worked in the East City and Central, and Ed works wherever the hell he wants to."

"Of course. Best way of procrastination against paperwo- I mean, helping the people of Amestris," Ed said.

"Sure, sure."

"I'm sorry," Umbridge said with a small laugh, "but I thought you just said that this child was in the military."

"Seems like that'd be a bit of a big slip-up if it was one, don't you think?" Ed replied, a tick mark pulsing on his head from the word related to 'short'.

"You're saying this student, who is not even eighteen, is in a military?" Fudge said, exasperated. "I highly doubt that. Besides, why would a military do that? What kind of country would even allow that sort of thing? No one would let that pass."

Ed snorted. "You kidding? The military basically _is_ the government. And they _did_ let it pass."

"Yeah, and the sad thing is, I think he gets more done than other people in the military do," Buccaneer muttered.

Fudge scoffed. "The whole idea is ridiculous. Why would they hire you?"

"Skilled alchemist, low on people in the military, etc.," Ed said. "Now they probably wouldn't, but the circumstances at the time allowed it. As you said, can't the rules be bent?"

Fudge glared. "I still don't think this is plausible. However, since none of you will listen to reason, or just want to keep up with your jokes, we will move on. Why did you even join the military anyway?"

Ed gave him a dangerous smile and a look that told him to shut up. "None of your damn business." He glanced at the piles of rubble and frowned. "If you all wouldn't mind leaving, I've got to repair all of this now. If we ever want to get home, anyway."

With the ghosts shooing them out, Ed was soon left alone to repair what had been there before.

* * *

><p>an: yup, another one posted. I was soooo lazy in getting it up and posted, though. I was doing, like, a paragraph or so a day, and then I wrote about two thousand words of it at once. And now it's up. Yay!

So, the whole language thing. People, let's agree that that whole area is disputed, and will remain so for a very long time. I would have liked to stick with Japanese, because slang and whatnot screws with the translator systems, but I have to agree that German really makes more sense in the long run to use for Amestrian. (Weird translation thing. Did you know that if you type in 'Liar, liar, pants on fire' in English, and then translate it to another language that I forgot, and take what appears and translate it back to English, you'll get something like 'Teller of untruths, teller of untruths, your lower garments are spontaneously combusting'?)

The German was redone since I don't speak German, and I'm assuming that the anonymous reviewer knew what they were talking about better than I do. Thank you, reviewer!

Next one'll be up sooner ish. Maybe. I'm going to be starting the one NCIS/FMA crossover sequel I was thinking of doing soon. It might even be up before the next chapter for this is posted. See you 'round the 'Verse!


	8. Ed's POV, 6, Amestris's POV, 3

a/n: For all writers out there, I come with good news. Ever had writer's block or something of the sort because you didn't know how your characters would react? Solution here! Simply take your character, hit some buttons on a machine, shove your character in the machine, and presto! Your character will instantly be in the virtual scenario you're having trouble with!

Yeah, I wish.

No particular reason for mentioning that. I just thought it up. Besides, I think scientists might have some moral problems with creating something like that. Unless they were writers, too.

I don't own Harry Potter, I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist. Durh. But if you want to see something funny about the Order of the Phoeniz movie, then look at Snape's expression every time he's near Umbridge. His voice too. _Priceless._

* * *

><p>(<em>England<em>)

"Any luck?"

Ed didn't bother stopping his work to see who was asking. "Yeah. About halfway done. Should take me an hour or two to finish it, unless no more certain redheads terrorize the place again, and dump everything in paint."

"Still picky about that," Hughes said knowingly. "Thought you might want to know, they'll be back down here again in a minute." Ed looked up, alarmed expression on. "Along with the rest of that defense group. Fu and Buccaneer are leading them down here."

"_Why_?" 'Ed's voice' was, from then on, under the definition of 'exasperated'.

"The one official and the kids she has following her almost caught them, but from some reason, no one was in the room they were looking in," Hughes said sarcastically. "Wonder why..."

"Not possibly because a bunch of mischief makers went and gave an advance warning. No, definitely not because of that." Ed rolled his eyes. "Tell them to behave. We don't have time for any more disruptions."

Hughes made an agreeing sound that also sounded thoughtful. "Ah, you might want to know... Some Aurors are in the building to chase the kids down. And they'll probably be searching the place, so you might want to hurry up."

Ed glanced at him. "Yeah, that'd be helpful to know."

The door to the room opened, and kids began to hurry in, wisely dodging all the white lines and markings, lest Death itself come down and smite their asses if they even went so much as a foot near the white. Two ghosts flew in with them, and a redhead near the back of the group shut the door.

"Jeez. You must have really pissed them off, or set them on edge," Buccaneer said. "The whole school's on shut down until the people in the 'conspiracy group' are caught."

"So?" Ed sighed. "They have to hide _here_?"

"If they head back to class or their common rooms, they'll be caught," Fu said. "Is the array done?"

"Of course, if we want to make a suicidal move and land ourselves in limbo," Ed replied dryly. "Wouldn't that be fun?" He motioned to the students to move to the right side of the door, the last place whoever was opening the door on the other side would see.

While they moved, Ed continued with the array. He ignored the others in the room, who were talking to each other in hushed whispers. About twenty minutes later, and the only major interruption had been when the search party had wisely (not) decided to search that room. The second the door began to open, Ed tossed one of the rocks still left over from the rubble at the opening door.

"Don't open that! You smear that chalk, and you'll be drawing the rest of this out yourself!" Ed yelled angrily at the Auror behind the door.

"But the-"

"I don't give a damn! Close the freaking door!"

The door reluctantly shut.

"Idiots," Ed muttered.

"Hey, Ed? You might want to hurry..." Hughes said absently. Ed glanced at him questioningly. "I think my body's calling me back."

"Almost done," Ed said the second Hughes disappeared. Ed hissed, and quickly drew more lines. The remaining ghosts moved forward in anticipation, and Ed whipped around to look at the bewildered students. "You people! Over here!" They exchanged startled glances.

Harry stepped forward. "Why?"

"You need an excuse for not being in your commons or any classroom, right? Fine. Then how's this? Crazy alchemist and ghosts kidnapped you guys to help drag the bodies up from beneath the dirt."

* * *

><p>(<em>Amestris<em>)

Prank day.

It was prank day. Those two words combined meant a few things to every commanding officer in the military. One: It was going to be hilarious as hell. Two: There would be so much shit to clean up the next day that the swearing caused from the whole event would make every religious person in the country momentarily shun the military.

The prank day idea had been all Grumman's. No one was really sure what got the idea started, but Mustang and a few others had the idea that it probably had something to do with too much alcohol one day. The idea had seemed funny at first. Until it was approved. Then it was just hell.

So far, they'd had an official prank day every month. All had been hysterical, but also annoying. One time, two people took two dogs and two trashcans, tied the trashcans to the dogs, and let them loose in the halls.* Another time, fish had been thrown all over the desks in every room. That had been more stinky and distracting than funny.

Prank day had returned. And it was sending the Amestrian military to Hell in a wastebasket, laughing while it did so.

Mustang sighed, and tapped his head repeatedly against his desk, carefully avoiding knocking over the coffee on it. Normally, he found the days fun because he had an excuse not to be doing paperwork. However, that day he just had a headache. Whose brilliant idea were the vuvuzelas and air horns?

He'd come up to the office to try and pull some pranks of his own, or at least revel in the chaos caused by others. Oddly enough, they'd come up with some suprisingly good ideas for distraction in the middle of a war due to these prank days.** Maybe _that_ had been the reason behind the day... Besides, they weren't planning to engage in any more wars any time soon, so maybe the day was also to help let off steam.

Lifting his head, he sighed again, and looked up as Hawkeye walked in, ear plugs sticking out of her ears. She cocked her head at him as he palmed himself for his own stupidity. Why hadn't he thought of those? She pulled the plugs out, and asked, "Anything interesting happen yet?"

"Someone let some goats loose in the east wing. They've been obnoxious from what I've heard, but not many can hear them over the...well..." He gestured around vaguely, unverbally mentioning the air horns and vuvuzelas. He took a drink of the coffee, hoping it would do something to the headache that didn't include increasing it.

Hawkeye paused. "Please don't tell me you got that coffee less than an hour ago."

He paused midsip, and without swallowing said, "About half an hour ago. Why?"

Hawkeye told him. He spit it back out.

"We have some idiots in this military," Mustang muttered, setting down the cup and avoiding it like the plague. "Is it any better down by the arrays?"

"It was fine until the ducks got in there."

"The wha- Never mind. Were they nesting or just flying through?"

"We made sure they can't get in, but they're camped outside the doors. They were making such a ruckus we all had to leave. Even the earplugs didn't help," she responded. "No sign from the ground array, but the air array has shown signs of being recompleted soon."

"Hn." He paused. "How the hell did the ducks get down there?"

"I'm not completely sure, but I think someone released them in the research facility, and they found the right place to enter. Door probably wasn't completely shut."

"I'll go check to make sure they haven't gotten in. Don't want to have to fix the array just because some ducks got loose." He walked out the door, and down the hall, Hawkeye trailing slightly after him. "Any specific reason to return to the office?"

"To warn you about the coffee."

"Ah. Thanks."

"You're welcome."

They'd been about to turn the corner before they heard the sound of something crashing. It came from the direction of the room they'd jsut left. Both sprinted back to the room, and barely ducked in time as something flew over ahead. It went through another wall, and then swooped back around through the wall and crashed back into the office.

Mustang threw open the now mangled door, and saw the flying object come to a halt in the middle of the room. It dropped to the floor, and he and Hawkeye exchanged a look of surprise.

A _broom_?

"Okay, we need to talk to those techies about prank day."

* * *

><p>"Is this a good idea?" Hermione asked. "I mean, what if someone sees?"<p>

"Can't chance not to. If someone sees us, we might get ratted out. This way, we'll have some more time before the Ministry comes after us. I didn't think it would take so long to shut down the portal, but after I tried I think it'll just take less time to do things this way instead. Can you send it already?" Ed asked impatiently, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

Hermione shot him a look, and then muttered a spell over the broom. It flew off, and went through a wall. All present winced, and it flew through the roof, in what looked to be the right direction.

"On to the resurrection part of this," Ed muttered. He led the rest to the graveyard where he remembered Hughes was buried, telling every person they saw on the way that they'd never been there. The soldiers they saw readily agreed, happily waving to the known alchemist. The ghost of Hughes had yet to rejoin them, so they assumed he was still in his body. Ed guessed that the soul would stay there, where it should be, now.

"So, why are we helping again?" Ron asked irritably. Several other DA members nodded enthusiastically.

"Because Ed is a friend!" Fred said cheerfully.

"And besides, I don't suppose you all remember the Ministry officials in our school right now, do you?" George added.

"And point to them," Lee said. "Come on, let's just raise the body already. Plug your noses."

"Always wanted to test this out. Should work," Fred said, dropping something on the ground. It slithered into the ground, and seconds later, all the dirt above the coffin exploded outward.

* * *

><p>"What's with the dog?" Breda asked. They were all used to Hayate. Hayate was currently, however, staring at another dog in the room.<p>

"It came shortly after the broom did," Mustang explained. The dog wagged its tail, as if understanding teir conversation completely. "Couldn't shoo it off. Havoc, you were one of the few in on all the pranks. Was this one of them?"

"The last thing anyone would want to try for a prank would be crashing a broom into the building," Havoc said. "I heard someone think of using a couch, but never a broom. I'm surprised it lasted after hitting all those walls."

"Barely. It's in shambles now," Hawkeye said. "We found a note tied to it."

Falman, standing over the broom, cocked his head upside down and raised an eyebrow at the letter. " 'Watch out for the bathrobe idiots'." He looked up. "That's Ed's handwriting. Who're the bathrobe idiots?"

"No idea. If he was sending a code, he's lost me," Mustang said. "Bathrobe pranks, Havoc?"

"None that I can think of. So, no."

"Either way, probably shouldn't leave it lying around," Hawkeye said, simultaneously moving it under a desk. Mustang clapped, and reverted the walls and window to their normal form. The second he finished, they weren't alone.

Five people appeared in the room. They didn't walk in, they appeared. Teleported. Out of thin air. And they were wearing... bathrobes?

The five people looked around for a few seconds, obviously getting their bearings. By the time, they focused on the people. Mustang noticed out of the corner of his eye that the mysterious dog was gone. "Um... Can we help you?" he said, not really sure what a good conversation starter for that sort of situation would be.

The person completely clad in pink cocked her head at him. Mustang had a bad feeling that she was going to speak. He was right. "Yes, I think you can. We're looking for a group of bad children who ran away from school. Have you seen them?"

"Yeah, heard something about them being here. They're-" Mustang began. Before he was interrupted.

"Hey, Colonel," a voice said. "Where the hell's my body at? Figured we might as well get it all done now... Oh hey, I know you." Looking up, they saw a sight that would never leave their memory. A dead person, handing upside down from the ceiling. The wall behind him was clearly seen through him, and he appeared content to hang around in the ceiling for the time being.

"Buccaneer...?" General Armstrong said. Buccaneer turned around to face the doorway, in which Armstrong and Izumi stood, and saluted the general. "Well. I see that you're hanging around," she remarked dryly.

Buccaneer grinned. "Yup. Fu's body is at Xing, I'm assuming?"

"Yeah. They sent for it."

"We figured. Ah, and if you see Padfoot, let him know that the others found what they were looking for," Buccaneer said. Armstrong nodded, and only those who knew her well could tell that she had no idea what he was talking about.

A redhead ran past Armstrong. She looked behind her, as a few more redheads followed the first. These people were followed by a ranting redhead women, yelling things after the others. Armstrong looked down the hallway after them, and then looked back inside the room.

The five people exchanged glances, and then took off running down the hallway.

The remaining people stood in silence for a minute.

"I hate prank day," Falman decided.

"Yup. Hey, Sirius. You're good," Buccaneer said. The others glanced at him, and then to where he was looking. A chair behind one of the desks scooted back, and the unknown dog padded out from underneath it. An odd motion occurred, and before the dog had taken another step, he wasn't a dog.

"I really hate this day, now," Falman amended.

"And it gets better, too." Buccaneer grinned.

As if on cue, fireworks went off outside the window.

"Hey, look, the twins," the person who was apparently named Sirius said. He waved at two people flying on brooms. He turned back to Buccaneer. "Where'd the other Order members find them?"

"Graveyard. They're in the building now, although I'm not really sure where..." Buccaneer said.

All confusion of where some people were was solved in a second. Ed flung open the door and ran in, swearing and yelling over his shoulder about something. A few other kids came in after him. And so did Hughes. "Oi, Colonel! Or, Lieutenant General now, it seems... Woah, you got far up," Hughes said cheerfully. He seemed oblivious to the shock of the people in front of him.

Fred chose that second to run into the window. George laughed at him from his own broom.

* * *

><p>(<em>Risembool<em>)

The children stared. Their teacher raised an eyebrow, daring them to challenge his authority.

"Teacher... Did you really just spend the entire school day explaining why people say 'Don't let the duck get to your array'?" a student asked.

"Of course! If not, you would've never fully understod!"

"Teacher, you had to explain every detail about a fictitious story for seven hours?"

"Absolutely!" Edward Elric grinned. "Do you doubt me, thy Lord Supreme of this classroom?"

The class sighed. Their teacher was definitely a nutjob.

* * *

><p>an: I think I got old of this around the time when I brought the ghosts in, but they're the whole reason for the ending. The tiring of this is why this chapter was so fast-paced, by the way. I just want it to be over. I've gotten bored with this story. I'm happy I was so close to the end, or none of you would have ever known how I was planning to end it.

*I didn't do it, but that's a true story. (Hey, they were "training for the Iditerod!")

**This is actually a techinque some companies, like Google, use. They let their employees loose for a day to do whatever they want to with the program, and that day actually gets more done for the company than any other day of the year.


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